(Spoilers) Silver Linings Playbook Review

***SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers may be found in the post below about VARIOUS ITEMS. And I'm going to add in a bit of filler text here to limit how much of the main article gets shown in a preview. That should take care of most of it. Hopefully. And away we go. SPOILER WARNING. ***

Totally watched this one because Jennifer Lawrence was in it and she was winning every award for best actress. Random preview scenes I saw were also enticing.

Overview
Pat gets out of a mental institution and tries to win his estranged wife back with Tiffany's help. Sort of a romantic comedy, but sort of not? It was a book adaptation -- read it after I saw the movie.

Good or Bad?
Silver Linings Playbook was the best movie I had seen in while back when I first saw it over a year ago. I found it to be funny, cute, sad, and touching. The story was relatively simple with Pat trying to win his wife back while Tiffany, a widow, somewhat covertly pursued him. While the movie had the essential parts of a typical romantic comedy, it felt different but in a good way.

One of the things that really stood out for me was the music. The original score was simple yet effective in adding an extra layer of emotion to some important scenes. Pat running in the rain after a major revelation was one of the best. Choices made for the soundtrack were also excellent and became quick favorites. The editing was very impressive across multiple scenes set to songs playing in the foreground -- "Girl from the North Country" stood out the most.

And then there was the acting. Bradley Cooper did an incredible job, in my view, but Jennifer Lawrence stole every scene. Her voice was very expressive and she delivered her lines well, but what really impressed me was how she managed to express so much emotion without speaking a word. I felt I could have turned the sound off and still been able to figure out what was going on by watching her face. Angry, hurt, "what am I doing," annoyed, "what the eff," shock, "eff you," etc. She managed to express all of these and more without speaking. I was not surprised she won all those awards after finally seeing her performance. The rest of the cast including Robert De Niro, Chris Tucker, and Julia Stiles were also great. Pat's friend, Ronnie, was another one of the highlights.

The movie had a bunch of memorable scenes from the dinner where the two first met to the wedding video incident. Then there was the diner, the walk back from the diner, the dance montage, lead up to the dance, the dance, "A Farewell to Arms," etc. There were some great scenes in the movie.

I especially loved the amount of foul language used -- truly. Excellent integration of music and excellent performances by the entire cast.