Ed's Review Dot Com

The Weinstein Company,

Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Julia Stiles, John Ortiz, Shea Whigham

Pat (Bradley Cooper) has been in a mental hospital for 4 years after finding his wife in a compromising situation. Now he’s home, reluctant to take his meds, hit by a restraining order from his ex-wife, and living with his Dad (Robert De Niro) (who obviously has his own mental issues) and trying to keep it together, but not very well. He meets young cop widow Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) and falls into a tumultuous friendship/relationship with her. She’s really troubled as well, so it’s like the blind leading the blind. Pat is trying to win back his wife in vain, and Tiffany is not ready to face the sudden accidental death of her husband. The two are totally broken and trying to find a silver lining somewhere in the midst of all their problems.

This is a really good film, that really deserved all the awards heaped upon it in 2012. The story is a close look at messed up lives and an inspection of mental illness that is really straight on. The ending is really sweet, but the movie is relatively harsh. I think Bradley Cooper did a good job in portraying the highs and lows of bi-polar disorder, and Jennifer Lawrence is really awesome in this film. She plays the mix of fragile/easily hurt vs. loud obnoxious so well, that she’s really believable. This was an excellent role for her to show what she can really do, and she did an excellent job. De Niro was superb as always. His role is a great mix of drama and comedy, and he’s done such a great job in funny roles lately and is a really good comic, but obviously plays the straight roles really well.

This film has a little bit of nudity near the beginning (when there’s a flashback to Pat finding his wife in the shower) but it’s short and not overly done. There is also some violence in a couple bloody fights, but that is not overly done either, so it’s barely an R rating. Just to let you know it’s not overly bad. But the subject matter is rather harsh for kids to understand, so the R rating is not a big problem anyway as kids probably aren’t going to enjoy this anyway. But for grownups, it’s nice on several levels. One, watching these people will make you feel better about yourself! Secondly, we can surely identify with the issues these people are having, and realizing that if we let ourselves do what we wanted (No filter, as Pat describes it) we could be just a bad off as these folks are. All in all, it’s a pretty touching film, well made, and one I really enjoyed. It’s a great mix of comedy, drama, and romance.

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