Review of Silver Linings Playbook (2012) by Elias J — 18 Jul 2015

Silver Linings Playbook is a hard movie for me to rate. The performances are great all the way around. Jennifer Lawrence is the best young actress in Hollywood right now. Robert De Niro gave his best performance in the last decade. Bradley Cooper was great and so was Jacki Weaver. Even Chris Tucker wasn't bad in his small role. I also really like David O. Russell. He's a great director and it shows here, but there was just something that was missing. The movie didn't ever come together for me and a weak ending left me slightly baffled. I may have expected too much.

Pat gets out of the mental institution and goes back home to live with his mother and father, and try to get his life back together. He dreams of getting his wife back, which his parents try to explain to him is impossible. He then meets Tiffany, a sister of a friend of Pat's wife. Pat and Tiffany begin working on a dance together for a competition, while Pat plots how to get back his wife.

This movie had a strange feeling to it the whole way through and I believe that was do to a weak script. Nothing came together. It's strange because normally the script isn't an issue for a Russell movie, but here it certainly was.