O no

Rating: 5/10 (30 November 2012)

Following The Fighter, David O. Russell takes another familiar story and reinvigorates it with a spirit of ensemble chaos. Scenes are stagey and dialogue crackles, and gestures flail and faces grimace, as if everyone's aware the camera is there and they all want to play to it. It's an uncanny dramatic style, one that drags you along for the ride, even when it sits incongruously with the naturalistic aesthetic.
Bradley Cooper plays Pat, a bipolar sufferer snatched from the asylum by his nervous mother, and brought home to recover in a real madhouse. Pat is obsessed with the idea of rekindling his marriage, the violent break- up of which was the cause of his original breakdown. (We needn't worry about any scary unpredictable outbursts - Pat's much-referred-to anger is strictly regulated by the code of Hollywood morality and comedy.) To do so he enlists the help of Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a dirty babe who needs a partner for a Dirty Dancing competition.
Silver Linings Playbook is ostensibly about mental illness, but really it's selling the age-old myth that any emotional dysfunction can be overcome with a Positive Mental Attitude. It does peddle it with vigour: there's real chemistry between Lawrence (more animated than usual) and Cooper (unsubtle but effective); the dialogue has an enjoyable runaway mine-cart quality; and the relationship between Pat Jr and Pat Snr (Robert De Niro, in his best role since Stone) is sometimes affecting.
But however Russell garnishes it, this is a predictable film which betrays its interesting setup by descending into a boring fairy tale. By the time the climactic dance-off comes around, rather than rooting for the meetcute triumph, I was desperate for Russell to claw back some anger or oddness or edginess, rather than following the Nicholas Sparks routefinder to easy soft-focus satisfaction.
It has the look and feel of an Oscar contender (in itself that's neither praise nor condemnation), but it's not clear for what it might win. The performances are decent, without plumbing the depths of those in The Master, while the script is zippy but thematically all over the shop. We'll just have to wait and see what's left after Lincoln sweeps the board.