Trot's Day Off: Silver Linings Playbook Review

The man is wearing a gray sweatsuit – the hoodie covered by a large black trash bag – while he runs. A young woman in a track suit appears, and tries to catch up to him. The man speeds up to avoid her. She catches up to him for an argument.

The man claims this is his jogging route, while the woman claims it's her neighborhood. The man runs off.

He runs, looks back, seeming to have lost her. “Damn,” he exasperates, slowing down. The woman then pulls back onto the road, running after him.

“Hey!” she says as she pulls up right behind him.

The man looks back, noticing her. “WHAT THE FUCK?!” he yells. “I'm married!”

Pat (Bradley Cooper) was released from a mental hospital not long before the jogging incident with Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence). 2012's Silver Linings Playbook follows Pat's re-immersion into society after he was placed in a Baltimore mental institution after brutally assaulting his now-estranged wife's paramour.

Silver Linings Playbook is a highly metaphorical film about a former mental patient that doesn't prove the protagonists mental problems. Cooper and Lawrence's portrayals of people with major issues are powerful – although not indicative of their insanity.

Pat spends the film trying to fulfill the concepts of “excelsior” and finding silver linings in everything. “If you stay positive, you have a shot at a silver lining,” he says. He really believes in the idea, the same way his father (Robert DeNiro) really believes in the luck of a handkerchief to win his weekly bets on the Philadelphia Eagles.

Pat spends a good portion of the film literally and figuratively running away from his problems. When Tiffany catches up to him, he begins dancing with her, metaphorically and otherwise. After it becomes clear (to the audience) that his life before the mental institution is not coming back, dancing becomes a metaphor for how he is trying to manage his new life. In finding Tiffany, Pat's journey to find silver linings is reached.

The reason given for Pat's admittance to the mental hospital was that he was bipolar, and had anger problems, evidenced by the beating he put on his wife's lover. The film shows two examples meant to further prove his disorder; when “Ma Cherie Amour,” – the song that was playing when he found his wife cheating – is played at his therapists office, causing him to mess up a magazine rack; and when some ignorant fans abuse his Indian therapist at an Eagles game, Pat comes to his rescue. While Pat does react angrily, these events don't prove any bipolar behavior; anyone is these situations would respond the same way.

After a dancing competition (which Tiffany got Pat to participate in through the promise of helping him) Tiffany runs away. When Pat catches up to her, that is when everything comes together, and their love is realized. These two people overcome major life problems, although neither of them is crazy, as the film attempts to portray.