Elizabeth Weitzman on "Silver Lining's Playbook"

In Elizabeth Weitzman’s review for Silver Linings Playbook you can tell she really enjoyed the movie from just the tagline under the Title. She opens her review with saying, “If there’s anything we can learn from David Russell’s ‘Silver Linings Playbook,’ it’s how crucial chemistry is.” If she had opened with that sentence without giving a positive header then we the readers would be unsure of her view of the movie.

Weitzman believes that it Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence’s acting skills and chemistry that leads the film to the commercial success it achieved. Weitzman feels that the director, David Russell, included a lot of clichés and without Cooper and Lawrence’s delivery, it may have saturated the movie. The fact that actor’s known mostly for their cult classic hits such as “The Hangover” and “the Hunger Games”, have chemistry and actual acting skills is impressive. A lot of actors’ careers die out as the popularity of their movie does as well, i.e. Ken Jeong. Cooper and Lawrence proved they are more than their most popular movie; they are real actors.

In her reviews, Weitzman gives a compact plot review but does not give away too much information. She keeps her information on a “need to know basis” and lets the viewer find the rest out on his or her own. I like her style of doing this because generally a viewer will read a review to see if the film is worth seeing. They are no longer interested in seeing the film if the entire plot is revealed in the review.

As much as Weitzman enjoys the film and the acting, she does give some criticism. She believes that the film was very predictable and ended like every other romantic comedy. Weitzman also criticizes Russell on his characters development through the movie.I do not completely agree with Weitzman. Pat (Bradley Cooper) may have started the movie off as a raging lunatic but that was a brief period of his life. Before his breakdown he was a doting husband with a life and a future. The movie starts after that but gives flashback to the original Pat. So in the end, when Pat begins to have a life and a future again, I felt like he had returned to his old self. I thought it was predictable but provided the viewers with the closure we all wanted.

Original review: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/movie-review-silver-linings-playbook-article-1.1202621