Silver Linings Playbook
Nigel Floyd

Review by Nigel Floyd

Silver Linings Playbook 2012

★★

Watched 01 Apr 2013

An absurdly over-praised, trite and manipulative love story featuring a manic depressive (Bradley Cooper) and a young grieving widow (Jennifer Lawrence). There are some cute scenes involving dancing.

Like Paul Haggis's Crash before it, this is one of those films which, in years to come, will be cited as an embarrassing, over-hyped anomaly on the Oscar roll of honour. Jennifer Lawrence did not deserve her Best Actress gong, and the nominations for her, Cooper, Robert de Niro and Jacki Weaver are ridiculous. Not to mention writer/director David O. Russel's nominations for Best Director and best Adapted Screenplay.

As usual the protagonist is more manic than depressive, and there is little hint of the tangible mental pain he is suffering. Lawrence's twitchy character is a pain in the arse - no more, no less.

It is appropriate to me that I saw this film on April Fool's Day, which seems to me the the perfect metaphor for the way that Academy members were duped.

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