Good movies have been made about mental illness; this isn't one of them.

Rating: 5/10 (21 February 2013)

David O. Russell has always appeared to me to be the fourth member of a quartet of directors, roughly contemporaneous, who include Paul T. Anderson, Wes Anderson, and Alexander Payne. I would say that, of the four, he has always been the weakest. The only one of his films I truly enjoyed was "Three Kings". With this effort, I think he may have slid a little bit farther down in my estimation. He did manage to get good performances out of his cast, but when that cast includes Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, and Jennifer Lawrence, that should be a given. As for the film itself, it was kind of a mess, really. It just seemed interminable, with a whole cast of irritating people acting in dramatically implausible ways. The most sympathetic character, for me, was Tiffany, but I suspect that had more to do with Jennifer Lawrence's performance than anything that was written into the part. I hope she gets the Oscar that she earned for "Winter's Bone", and I hope a worthier role comes her way in the near future.