20160404: Drama Review--Silver Linings Playbook

Name: Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
IMDb: link to Silver Linings Playbook

Genres: Drama   Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence as Tiffany, Robert De Niro as Pat Solatano Sr, Jacki Weaver as Dolores Solatano, Chris Tucker as Danny, Julia Stiles as Veronica, Dash Mihok as Officer Keogh, John Ortiz as Ronnie, Anupam Kher as Dr Cliff Patel, Paul Herman as Randy, Shea Whigham as Jake.

Directed by: David O. Russell.  Written by: David O. Russell (screenplay), Matthew Quick (novel).

image courtesy of The Movie Database

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Narcissist Pat Jr is in a mental hospital.  His keepers are nagging him that it's time to go.  He keeps putting them off.  This pattern is repeated forever: Pat won't do as he's told, or requested, or cajoled, just for the sake of thumbing his nose at whoever is bothering him.  Pat's mother Dolores signs him out and takes him home.

Pat Jr's ex-wife Nikki has a restraining order against him, in part because he beat the hell out of Nikki's lover while she was still married to Pat Jr.  In Pat Jr's defense, the adulterer was in the shower with Nikki, in Pat Jr's house, and told Pat Jr to leave his own house so that he could continue with Nikki.

Delineation of conflicts:
Pat Jr wants Nikki to come back to him.  Nikki wants him to stay the hell away from her.  Pat Sr is also nuts (wails on other fans at sports contests), and Dolores has to put up with their endless nonsense.  Senior has OCD plus, and Junior is bipolar with severe mood swings.

Tiffany enters the scene and makes things worse.  She has her own issues and does not hesitate to dump on others, definitely including Pat Jr.

Pat Jr would like to get his old teaching job back.  The administrators of the school are hardly interested in that, given Pat's proven history.

Pat Sr and Randy, both bookies, end up with a big 'parlay' double bet just past Christmas.  First, the Eagles versus the Cowboys in football, plus a bet on the dance score that Tiffany and Pat Jr achieve.  Much of the last third of the film is about this.

Resolution: Does Pat Jr. find a durable silver lining?  Does he find a strategy to stay out of explosive interactions with other people?  Will Pat Sr's OCD get the better of him?

One line summary: Vastly overrated drivel.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 3/10 Washed out, at least early on.  Bad framing that smacked of shaky cam.

Sound: 6/10 I could hear the actors speaking the dialog.  Some of the music was quite good.

Acting: 4/10 Jennifer Lawrence won Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Oscar) in 2013 for her portrayal of Tiffany.  So I gave this a nonzero score.  This is a very forgettable film for DeNiro and Julia Stiles, two actors whom I usually like without reservation.  I did not care for the other performances at all.

Screenplay: 0/10 The characters, as written, are irritating without being interesting.  I identified with zero of them, empathised for none of them, and did not care in the least how the characters or relationships ended up.

Early on, Pat Jr intends to go out in public wearing a trash bag with holes cut through it.  It's only by luck that he's talked out of it, if only for a short time.  Is this meant to be important, or just a good sign to stop watching?

Final rating: 4/10  OK, barely. 

Pre-emptive considerations.

1. Bradley Cooper's blatant asshole personality glares through from the beginning, just as it does in every other film the jerk is in.
2. I could do without Chris Tucker.  Of course, I think that for every single film I have watched in which Chris Tucker appears.
3. The property is loaded with sports metaphors and dialog, so I tuned out during much of the film.  If I wanted a sports show, there is plenty on HBO.
4. The cinematography looks washed out and flat, perhaps from deliberate use of measured overexposure. I suppose that was used to reflect the high entropy existence of drug-addled mental patients.