Silver Linings Playbook

An edited version of this article originally appeared in the Saturday Nation on 9th January 2013 under the title "Romantic comedy poised to win big in this years Oscar awards"

Countdown to the Oscars has begun. The 85^th academy awards are barely three weeks away and one of the films predicted to win big will be romantic comedy Silver linings Playbook. The movie is the work of American director and screen writer, David Russell, who brought the world Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees and has bagged eight academy awards among them best director and best picture.

The film which won the 2012 people’s choice award at the Toronto international film festival is led by Hangover star Bradley cooper who plays the role of Patrizio Solitano Jr. Pat is a bipolar high school teacher who has just been released from Baltimore mental facility after 8 months prescribed to him by a court of law for an incident that is not revealed at the start of the movie.

His mother Dolores Solatano (Jacki Weaver) despite having her doubts and without the knowledge of her husband picks Pat from the hospital. On the day, Pat tries to break out his friend Danny (Chris Tucker) but the hospital calls before they are too far and they have to take him back. On getting home Pat learns that his wife Nikki has sold their home and moved away while he was in hospital. On top of this, she has placed a restraining order against him.

Pat’s father, Pat senior,  played by academy award winning Robert De Niro has also lost his job while pat was hospitalized and has turned to book making to try and raise money to open a restaurant. On the first few nights, the disillusioned Pat is a pain to his parents. His obsession with his wife Nikki leads him to stay up all night reading literature books that his wife, a school teacher as well, taught.

Pat, who does not take his medicine because he doesn’t like it, is forced to attend therapy sessions with Dr.Patel as part of his release agreement. It is during these sessions that we find out what had led to his hospitalization. One day while returning home form work, he walks in to find his wife having sex with the school’s history teacher in their bathroom.

As if this was not bad enough, they two were playing the couple’s wedding song Stevie wonder’s My Cherie amour. Pat nearly beats the tomcatting history teacher to death and hence his arrest and hospitalization. As a result, every time Pat hears the song, he becomes enraged and violent.

Pat tries hard to recover and get back his life with the hope that Nikki would take him back. He is invited to dinner by his friend Ronny and meets Ronny’s equally psychotic sister in law Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence).

Tiffany has recently lost her husband and is recovering from sex addiction. Although they get off on a wrong start, the two later find out that they need each other.

Pat desperately needs to speak to Nikki and Tiffany offers to deliver his letter as he is not allowed anywhere near her. In exchange, she needs pat to be her dancing partner for a Christmas dancing competition she has always wanted to go. Problem is Pat doesn’t know how to dance and is not interested in learning. 

The film which was released late last year was an outstanding theatrical success beating the 100 million mark in box office revenue collection.  This is a win as it cost 20 million to produce. Much of the success can be attributed to the mature, sophisticated humor that the movie offers.

 The movie which was adopted from a book by Mathew quick going under the same title, tells the audience that we all have a little of crazy in us but at the end everything turns out okay. It is the story of lost love and picking oneself up after a fault. It’s a story about it being okay to be imperfect. It is a story about sibling rivalry and it is a story about a father and son struggling with their respective and sometimes enjoined problems. 

Critics received the movie well. Rotten tomatoes gave the film a 92% rating with votes collected from 214 people.

Respected critic Roger Eberts said of the movie “We're fully aware of the plot conventions at work here, the wheels and gears churning within the machinery, but with these actors, this velocity and the oblique economy of the dialogue, we realize we don't often see it done this well. "Silver Linings Playbook" is so good; it could almost be a terrific old classic.”

For the Oscars however, Silver Lining Playbooks still has to beat other big titles like Argo, Lincoln, Life of Pi and Zero Dark Thirty. Time will tell.