So which David O. Russell will appear for "The Silver Linings Playbook"? The movie, about an institutionalized man (played by Bradley Cooper) who returns to his parents (Jacki Weaver and Robert De Niro) and falls in love with a similarly unwell woman (Jennifer Lawrence), also marks the first time anybody's seen Chris Tucker since "Rush Hour 3" (in a dialed down performance) and it's hard to gauge thus far where it will land tonally. Will it be something a bit more screwball like "Flirting With Disaster" or "I Heart Huckabees," or a deft blend of comedy and drama like "The Fighter"?
Everything we've seen from the movie thus far, including the trailer and and these handful of new photos released by the Weinstein Company suggest the former, but as always, you never can tell (and certainly no one could have guessed the humor in "The Fighter" from the spots for that movie). And the film, which is based on a novel by Matthew Quick and is set to premiere at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, certainly has an ace cast to bring it life with a pretty marquee and red carpet ready batch of talent in Cooper, De Niro, Weaver, Lawrence and Tucker.
We'll know if we're looking at Oscar contender, crowd pleasurer, something in the middle or something else entirely. You can see it yourself when "The Silver Linings Playbook" opens on November 21st.
Saw this at a test screening months ago and liked it. Tonally, it's somewhere in the middle of Russell's other movies. It's much less serious than The Fighter, though it depicts the severe swings of bipolar disorder fairly accurately, and its shot with the same on-the-fly naturalistic style. I'd say it's doused with a little of the manic comic energy of Flirting With Disaster, but it's not as farcical as that film. Cooper and Lawrence really carry the movie – I'd say it's close to both of their best performances. The whole third act comes together too neatly, and Cooper's character seems so self-possessed in the final sequence that it's almost as if he was a different character. But it's a winning B/B+ film despite its flaws.
Silver Linings PlayBOY? That's a typo you might want to fix.