"The world will break your heart ten ways to Sunday. That's guaranteed. I can't begin to explain that. Or the craziness inside myself and everyone else... I think of what everyone did for me, and I feel like a very lucky guy." -Pat Solitano
You might ask yourself, "Really? A ten out of ten Joe?" Well, yeah. I fought long and hard whether or not the film deserved that rating, but at the end of the day a review is a personal opinion and this film came into my life during a time I needed it most. So sit back, and enjoy the review.
Silver Linings Playbook is a story about a man who's life has literally fallen apart. Patrick "Pat" Solitano (Bradley Cooper) has just been released from a mental health facility and is staying at his parents house while trying to get his life back on track when he meets Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence) at a dinner party. Blinded by his own obsession with getting back together with his wife, Pat is torn between spending time with his father (Robert De Niro) who thinks he is a good luck charm for the Philadelphia Eagles, and making deals with Tiffany who he believes can get him a line of communication to his beloved wife.
Okay. I get it. Everyone is over Jennifer Lawrence. "She tries too hard to be goofy," or "They're just throwing her into roles lately." That may be true. But one thing is also true; her performance in Silver Linings Playbook was phenomenal. The way she matches Pat's crazy with her own brand of crazy is a spectacle in itself. Lawrence is emotional, hurt, and fighting all throughout this film and it's amazing. Where Pat's crazy is more self contained and inwardly delusional, Tiffany's is chaotically raw and full of harsh truth.
The beauty in this film are the flaws present in each of the characters. The father is dealing with a gambling problem and regret, Pat has delusions of going back to the life he had before, and Tiffany has her own demons she has to tame. No matter what your problems are, you can really relate to these characters because just like us, none of them are perfect. They're trying to figure out this mess like the rest of us. The heart of a good story is conflict, but to sell that story to an audience you need the characters to be relatable. And that's just what this film does.
Hands down, the best scene in this picture is when De Niro is giving his son advice at the climax of the movie, so watch out for that. Also every scene that has Chris Tucker.
Maybe we're not all that great at reading the signs in our own lives. Sometimes we're all so wrapped up in seeing what we want to see and trying to get where we want to go in life that we forget to take a look around and see what's actually right there in front of us the whole time. Sometimes you have to go a little crazy to get yourself back to normal, and that's okay.