Silver Linings Playbook

I am getting pretty exhausted over this vacation. Not only have I been editing and formatting my novel for the past few days, I've stayed up to 2:00 in the morning to try and get through the whole first season of 24. And now I'm trying to get through as many Oscar nominees as possible, hence: I saw Silver Linings Playbook today.

I don't want to get too far into this movie, because it was a romance and... well... f**k romances. But it was good enough, I suppose, mainly due to Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and Robert De Niro's performances. It had several flaws, though-- some pretty gaping ones. First off, it's a movie about the mentally ill falling in love. Yaaaay! Still, it handles that situation a lot better than some movies would have. I can't IMAGINE what Michael Bay would have done with that.

Second, the climactic sequence centers around football and dancing. And not just any kind of football: THE PHILADELPHIA EAGLES. Those two things basically killed the last half-hour for me. Let's all just have a moment of silence to thank God that the Eagles and the Oakland Raiders didn't play in the Superbowl. People would have DIED. At least, more people than in a usual football game. Hmm...

Finally, the ending was far too Hallmark-y for my taste. I'm sure that if you're the kind of viewer who likes to have the ol' heartstrings tugged, it'll be fine, but not for me. Besides, it's physically impossible for me to feel any emotion over movies after seeing the saddest moment in movie history of all time: Spock's death in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Not joking. There is NOTHING that can rival that.



I mean, just by looking at the poster, you know what to expect. But I'm glad I saw it, because now I've seen five of the ten Oscar nominees for Best Picture, plus I plan on seeing Zero Dark Thirty this weekend (the others being Django Unchained, Lincoln, Argo, and Life of Pi). I really don't know what to root for at this point. I'd be fine if Argo won, I loved Lincoln, and it would be great to see Quentin Tarantino win an Oscar for Best Picture after being snubbed for Pulp Fiction. But when it comes down to the wire, I couldn't care less.

And so, drumroll please, for the final score of Silver Linings... 7/10 stars. Yeah, it was corny, but it had two of my all-time favorite actors, plus Jennifer Lawrence in yoga pants. So A+!

Bye!