Silver Lining Playbook Review

 Plot: Two neurotic people who fall for each other and prove to be a silver lining for one another. Pat Jr, a bi-polar married person is released from a Baltimore mental institution into the custody of his parents after undergoing treatment for 8 months after he had beaten up the history teacher whom he had found in the shower with his wife. He has a restraining order that prohibits his appearing within five hundred feet of his wife, Nikki. He is now unemployed, without his own home and under the supervision of a psycho-analyst. He is supposedly still in love with his wife and wants to patch up with her. He is on medication, and loves wearing a black garbage plastic as a cut-off sleeve jacket over his t-shirt (top half). He is so hyper that he wakes up his parents twice in the middle of the night – once to relate Ernest Hemingway’s “Farewell to Arms” story and second time to find where his wedding video is.

I mean, the world’s hard enough as it is, guys. It’s fucking hard enough as it is. Can’t somebody say, “Hey, let’s be positive? Let’s have a good ending to the story?”

 He meets Tiffany, a sloppy and dirty, big slut widow at their friends place. Her husband, a cop, dies while helping changing a tyre of a car passing by  after he had purchased her Victoria Secret lingerie after a fight with her. She has been fired from her job for “having sex with everybody in the office”, as she confesses to Pat Jr. She has slept with 11 people from the office that includes women. She has been fired for such forward behavior.

Pat Jr is into reading good books and developing a positive attitude. Both, Tiffany and Pat Jr, fall for one another and after a dance scene where they receive a rating of 5 out of 10, they confess their love for one another and the rest is history!

 

Comments: There are a lot of  literary references strewn around in the movie. There is synopsis of William Golding novel “Lord of the Flies“ as told by Tiffany.

I can tell you all about the “Lord of the Flies.” It’s a bunch of boys on an island and they have a conch -- they have a shell -- and whoever has the conch has the power and they can talk. And if you don’t have the conch,then you don’t have the power. And then there’s a little chubby boy, and they call him Piggy and they’re really mean, and then there’s a murder. I mean, humanity is just nasty and there’s no silver lining.

There is reference to Ernest Hemingway with the tragic ending of “Farewell to Arms”.

I mean, the world’s hard enough as it is, guys. It’s fucking hard enough as it is. Can’t somebody say, “Hey, let’s be positive?

Origin of word Ok is provided as related by Pat Jr

Well, Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States of America, is from Kinderhook, New York... ...and he was part of a club, a men’s club, called Old Kinderhook. And if you were cool, you were in the club, they’d say, “That guy’s OK.” ‘Cause he was in the Old Kinderhooks.

There is “Excelsior”, the official motto of state of New York and the call to move ever upward. OCD Mental disorders is depicted through de Niro, Pat Jr’s father who is prone to aligning the remote controls to the home theater system perfectly. Pat Jr is suffering from bi-polar disorder and is on medication.

Casting: Also, I am curious to know what made the casting director select Anupam Kher from the whole wide world as a psycho-analyst? An Indian psycho-analyst by the name of Dr Chris Patel? A Gujarati and psychoanalysis? Sounds far-fetched. Maybe,the movie is catering to the global audience by having the Asian population represented by Kher, black population by the fellow-patient cum dance-mover Danny [Chris Tucker] and the South American community by the Brazilian svelte dancer. That should have appealed to  the Oscar academy jury-members, I guess!

Conclusion: Bradley Cooper(Patrizo Jr Solitano) gets to be the next James Bond. And, he will rock !!!

Rating: 4 stars out of 5