Conventional fairy tale masquerading as edgy drama

Rating: Null/10 (23 February 2013)

David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook" stars Bradley Cooper as Pat Solitano, a middle aged man with bipolar disorder. Recently released from a mental health facility, Pat's determined to win back his estranged wife. These hopes are undermined by Pat's many violent, angry outbursts.
Pat's delusions – his wife wants nothing to do with him – are mirrored to several other characters in the film. Pat's father, for example, is deeply superstitious, and a young woman, played by Jennifer Lawrence, proves unable to accept the death of her husband. The film ends with a dance competition. Lawrence and Cooper have no chance at winning, but enter the competition riding on a cloud of optimism, hope and faith. They lose, but place high enough to win a monetary bet which affirms the superstitions of Cooper's father. The film's point? Man should remain relentlessly optimistic in the face of adversity and be constantly open to silver linings, the faint signs of which invariably line all events. Sounds familiar? It's "Girl Interrupted" with added testosterone.
"Silver Linings" message is positively easy when your script is built upon clichés and contrivances. Cooper's yet another sad-sack middle aged man who's essentially cured through sex with a conveniently placed, ultra hot young woman. This is self-help through love and copulation, a feel-gooder fairy tale in which men are saved from themselves by the embrace of a good woman who understands their pain. Lawrence's character, meanwhile, is a giant emo fantasy; a sultry wounded girl with black mascara, more curves than a Monte Carlo racetrack, and who copes with grief by humping everyone in her office. "There's always going to be a part of me that's sloppy and dirty," Lawrence says. But we don't believe her. She's sex on legs, Russell lingering on her tight leotards, designer pout and ample luggage.
Indeed, "Silver Linings Playbook" will henceforth probably be known as the film which put Jennifer Lawrence's butt on the map. Which map? Probably the map of Middle Earth. Lawrence's booty is so precious, it looks like her butt was forged by Sauron himself. And not only does Russell cast the "official sexiest woman of 2012" in his film, but he casts actor Bradley Cooper as well, a bronze Adonis twice voted the sexiest man on the planet. That's a whole lotta sexiness for one film. You half expect these two to break out into a suburban rap battle, Cooper free-styling "Baby Got Back", Lawrence "My Humps". What's that Cooper, you like big butts, you cannot lie? Congratulations, ima cure your mental illness with my humps, my humps, my sexy lady lumps. This some deep drama right here.
"Playbook's" all about curing depression and mental illness through dancing and having lots of implied sex, but there's no "curing" going on in the film, only deflections upon deflections. The neuroses of Cooper's father are reaffirmed, Cooper and Lawrence merely replace their spouses and one local friend continues to drown his corporate miseries in designer furniture and material purchases.
At its best, the film works well as a screwball comedy. Cooper and Lawrence hide blossoming attraction with mutual resentment and much verbal sparring, but this witty banter doesn't last long. Meanwhile Russell's script leaves little room for nuance. Nothing is concealed, and there's little for the audience to do other than just watch these people crawl their way to inevitable redemption. Elsewhere the film's aesthetic echoes Russell's work on "The Fighter", fractured, choppy and angry – a constant stream of emotional fireworks - and so mirroring Cooper's own state-of-mind.
In the end, it's Robert De Niro's Pat Sr. who leaves the biggest impression. De Niro doesn't act particularly well here, and his character's not particularly well written, but because several of his subplots were removed (to push the film toward a lighter, more fairy tale ending), his character, whose latent hostilities are meant to provide a rationale for his son's troubles, retains an ambiguity which somehow makes him more rounded, mysterious and human.
Incidentally, Russell's underrated "I Heart Huckabees" featured a hero who rejects the idea of meaningful coincidence. This is the flip-side to "Playbook", which advocates a kind of fake-it-till-you-make-it optimism. In "Huckabees", our hero then suffers an existential crisis, stops trying to help others (he's an activist, like Russell was) and collapses into hedonism. He then rejects this in favour for a Zen-like state of ego-lessness and "pure being", a state which he, of course, cannot maintain. The film ends with our hero reconciling at least four philosophical positions into a whole new life code. This film, Russell's best, was bashed by critics and shunned by audiences. Ever since then he's become a somewhat generic film-maker, albeit one now showered in Oscars and accolades.
7/10 – Worth one viewing. "Playbook's" soundtrack contains "Girl From the North Country", arguably Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash's best recorded collaboration.