Elliott Noble on Silver Linings Playbook

Although the film is not so recent anymore, I decided to look at Elliott Noble's review on Silver Lining Playbook. Noble adeptly combines analysis and plot summary within his first paragraph, establishing the genre and the main actors in the film all within a sentence. Noble then includes plot details that develop the characters rather than give too much plot away. For example, he tells us that Pat Sr. is an enthusiastic Eagles fan and that he aspires to be a bookie. These details don't spoil the film for us, but rather give us a basis for the main conflict of the film.

One of my favorite lines of his review is when he explains that his summary of the plot "makes it all sound like what might happen if Harry met Sally in the Cuckoo’s Nest." This is a particularly descriptive and eye-catching line because it combines two well-known films to describe Silver Lining Playbook. I haven't seen the film, but I have an idea of what the feeling of the movie is thanks to Noble's simile. Similarly, near the end of his review, when he describes Pat's "pal from the nuthouse" and his role in the film, he also includes the fact that the actor was the dad in Bend It Like Beckham. That little bit of information helped me to immediately connect the name of the actor with a face I could recognize, so I was thankful for the reference.

I also really liked how Noble pointed out that Julia Stiles plays a secondary role in this film while in the early 2000's she would have had the lead role. He explains that having Julia Stiles move to secondary roles works great for a film that is trying to get across an idea of the passage of time and inevitable fate.

Noble's hook seems to be the fact that although this is considered a romantic comedy, Silver Lining Playbook does not follow some of the characteristics of other films in the same genre and is not as saccharine as most other romantic comedies. Instead, this film contains darker humor and satire and, as Noble claims that "for people who wouldn’t normally go near a date movie without dosing up on lithium, this is one playbook that delivers what it says on the cover."