Silver Linings Playbook was a great movie I would have seen if I had done more research ahead of time. I have known for months now that Jennifer Lawrence is a candidate, if not the favorite, for this year’s Best Actress Academy Award and that Bradley Cooper could snag one of the five nominations in the Best Actor category. The movie might land a spot in the Best Picture category, though it would have little chance of winning. So the Oscar buzz was one reason that got me to the theater. The other was that the movie centered on mental illnesses and broken relationships. Those movies often, but not always, engross me. I saw drama and comedy as words associated with this movie. Perhaps naively, I did not see a romantic comedy. While there was a bit of drama and some attempts at comedy (which I found to be weak), this slowly but surely turned into a romance. By the movie’s conclusion, I was very, very okay with that. Though flawed at times, it came together nicely and felt reasonably original to me. If ten movies are nominated for Best Picture this year, Silver Linings Playbook will and should be one of them.
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