Silver Lining for the Crazy

…may contain spoilers! Actually, scratch that, it contains spoilers.

Seems this will be the last of the Oscar nominees for this year that I will manage to share my thoughts on before the actual ceremony.

If you watch the trailer, you wouldn’t really get an idea of what the movie is about. It looks like a spastic jumble of scenes and characters from a… sarcastic romantic comedy?

The movie is not much different. I wouldn’t really be able to tell you what it is about. Is it about finding love in the weirdest places, is it about finding normality in the crazy, is it just a story about a bunch of people with a few weird issues..? Let’s assume that the makers of the movie intended that… otherwise, all in all, the movie wouldn’t really be worth us reviewing it.

I have a few issues with the movie.

Casting. Why would you pick Bradley Cooper, a mostly one-dimensional actor with no depth to do a role with so many nuances? Don’t get me wrong, I like him, but he hasn’t really provided the movie scene with spectacular performances in his career so far. He funny, but let’s face it he is “situationally” funny and don’t push Limitless to my face, ‘cause that was just unimpressive and still rather one-dimensional. Jennifer Lawrence. With her for me it’s a bit of a rollercoaster. I generally like her as one of the few young actresses that go by being natural and rather normal about her. However, empty performances like the Hunger Games made me go “eeehh” when I heard she got nominated again for this year’s Oscars. I am not convinced about her character here either.  She is convincing, but it seems to be a role that does not require much acting, but rather re-acting. Also, she is being too cool, don’t you think? ‘Cause it’s just so obvious she would know everything about US football as every American would and would just start throwing in numbers and figures like nothing when convenient… also, where the hell did she find that beer from(living room fight scene)? And why didn’t they teach her how to drink beer from the bottle properly? Robert De Niro. Chill, I am not going to go and start criticizing him, De Niro is f*cking De Niro, however I have had issues with his latest movie choices, which seems to be rather a trend among the movie dinosaurs recent years. What’s up with that? Are they so low on cash? All in all, he starts off weak in this movie, but a few character meltdowns easy proved why he is who he is.

Camera work. Too much camera rotating, made me dizzy more than anything else, also makes you take the moment much less serious. The funnel effect was decent at times, it added to the hectic-ness of the scenes.

The movie has too many convenient set ups, too cheesy ending and rather anti-climactic plot twists, but in some messed up bipolar way, I enjoyed it. The movie is just one crazy story about crazy people told in a rather crazy way, and I like it because I am myself rather hectic and crazy and come from a loud and crazy family. Should we accept that the movie aimed at being a snapshot of the lives of very normal yet very abnormal people I think it succeeded rather well. Full of subtle weird jokes, random characters (just love the research student popping up), humorous characters (Dr. Patel and Chris Tucker’s Danny are funny in their not being funny). It is a movie about something so trivial yet so important in the lives of normal people (I come from a family of fanatic football fans, I know how that goes as well). It stretches the fairly realistic characters in situations that go from for example the manliest (US football fight) to the most degrading for a guy (being forced into a dance competition) which adds so much life to the simple straightforward storyline. And my most favorite of all, the movie is so theatric. It just brings an old-forgotten breath of old-school comedy or even a theatre play with its simple settings, dramatic dialogues and plot peaks of all the characters being in the same room unraveling their biggest challenge. Great house circus…

To cut what has turned into a rather long story short, if you need a dose of random crazy in your life, see Silver Linings Playbook. As for the crew getting a silver lining at the Oscars this year? I dunno… what do you think?