Silver Linings Playbook

I’m very nervous about tomorrow’s elections in the U.S.  In a sane world, this would be a cake walk for the Democrats.  All economic indicators are up.  Nobody in the U.S. is getting Ebola.  And all the Republicans do is scream about abortion and propose bills that  would  criminalize miscarriages, block appointments, threaten to cause more problems with Obamacare, and try to cut social security, while removing environmental regulations.  They are pro-pollution, pro-war, and corrupt as the day is long.  Mitch McConnell has committed at least one felony this week, and that’s not counting the cocaine found on his father-in-laws boat.

Nice lady springing her violent psychopath son and his even zanier friend out of the loony bin

Yet all the pollsters expect them to do well.  I’ve got my fingers crossed that the pollsters are wrong, that we take Kentucky and Georgia and hang onto Iowa, but there’s nothing more I can say.

So, I’ll just give you a movie review.  Just watched Silver Linings Playbook with Helena.  She didn’t really stay entirely awake for the whole thing, but I’m used to that.  Doesn’t necessarily make it a bad movie.

I don’t know why but I was expecting a romantic comedy.  Through the first scene in group therapy, I kept waiting for something funny to happen, especially with all the cryptic references to ‘the incident,’ but then they flashed back to the incident and, oh, I see, nothing particularly comical about this  film at all, except maybe in a David Lynch lite  kind of way.

By the Shakespearean definition  you could call it a comedy because nobody got killed, except Tommy, and he was dead before the film started and didn’t have too much to do with the whole thing except for being the whole reason Jennifer Lawrence was crazy.

In fact, it did fit the modern format of a romantic comedy, from meeting under comical circumstances, to lots of over the top arguments, to winning the  dance contest (well, they  only got a 5 and none of the other contestants could understand why they were cheering that but it meant they won the bet and Robert de Niro got to keep his restaurant and then Bradley Cooper told Jennifer Lawrence that he was in love with her after all and they lived happily ever after.

So, except for all the dark, depressing shit about violence, and delusion, and neuroses, and people taking advantage of each other, and except for the ridiculous message that betting your whole life savings on a football game is not a bad idea if you have totally got all your lucky charms figured out, it would have worked O.K. as a comedy.

As is, I give it about a 7.5, maybe an 8.  It was original, it was different, and the acting was great.