The movie opened with Pat (Bradley Cooper) doing his routine inside a psychiatric facility and the audience follows his eventual discharge from the hospital, tagged along with her nervous wreck of a mother Dolores (Jacki Weaver) . We then meet his equally-demented father, Pat Sr. (Robert de Niro), who has superstitious behavior - such as his belief of good juju and luck when his son is rooting for his team, aligning remote controls and holding on to a hanky while watching games - bordering OCD who plays the illegal bookmarking game. He was too knee-deep in the situation that he had to bet his fortune to build a restaurant in the game. Forward into the movie and we meet several other characters that revolve around Pat and one of the most prominent ones is Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence). Overwhelmed over the death of his husband, she fell into depression and had a negative outlook on life until she met another messed-up man in the form of Pat.
Not your typical romantic couple, the two struck a deal to help one another in their situation: she gives a letter to his wife, he helps her in her dance competition. The movie played along these lines with a sprinkling of the craziness that I said before: Pat's bipolar mood swings especially when Stevie Wonder's 'My Cherie Amour' plays, Pat Sr.'s superstitious behavior and things he do to make his football team win, Tiffany's actions to manipulate Pat into getting him to dance with her along with the marriage problem of Pat's friend, constant musings of the mentally impaired and whatnot. These things got me hooked so much so that I eventually liked the movie despite its happy ending.
One of Tiffany's actions to get Pat involved in her dancing competition was writing a letter that was supposedly written by Pat's wife. Eventually, Pat recognized this after a heated row in the household when his Dad's team lost, Tiffany got involved when he stood her up for dance practice and started to say things that instead of messing up the juju when she's with his son, she actually made the juju good when they're together. In the end, Pat Sr. made another deal in terms of parlay: the football team wins and Pat and Tiffany score an average of at least 5.0 which they won and everything seemed to get back to normal: Pat Sr. seemingly lost his superstitious behavior as shown by the disarray of the remote controls, Pat getting over his obsession over his wife and eventually getting Tiffany.
After watching the film, I felt dumb for typecasting actors particularly Lawrence for her character in 'Hunger Games', Katniss Everdeen. Tiffany's odd character spewing cusses and showing how bad a girl she is contrasts with the upright and war hero attitude of Katniss. This only shows how versatile an actor she is. Kudos to Lawrence for also being quite chubby on the cheeks. No offense meant but this is a compliment, rather. Movies have shown leading ladies with their skinny arms and almost-emaciated face but Lawrence showed that being an inch-too-wide is not a hinder.
And the movie has a lot of feels that you can't help but relate. I mean, who can't relate to this scene:
See, I told you this is not a movie review. This is just me explaining how I liked 'Silver Linings Playbook' despite its happy romantic ending.
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