The film starts with a woman (Jacki Weaver) checking Pat,
her adult son (Bradley Cooper), out of a mental hospital. He’s had a breakdown
that matches the collapse of his marriage. Now living with his mother and
freshly unemployed father (Robert DeNiro), Pat thinks that if he can put his
life back together convincingly enough, he’ll win back his wife. This seems
like denial, seeing as she got a restraining order on him. He seems like a
smart man, but he’s unable to face his problems head on. His therapist (Anupam
Kher) encourages him to stay on his medication, encouragement he’s quick to
ignore. He obsessively jogs, reads, and lingers on the edges of his former
life. Sometimes he lingers too closely, leading a friendly cop (Dash Mihok) to wander
over and remind the family about certain court-ordered distances.
Realizing that living in the past is no help, friends and
family set up a dinner at which Pat can be introduced to Tiffany (Jennifer
Lawrence), a widowed young woman who has been through more than her fair share
of therapy. It’s not clear what their relationship will develop into, although
it’d be nice if they could find some way to ease their anguish together.
Russell frames their tentative steps towards friendship in likably loose scenes
of brisk comedy and bracing emotional truths. The ensemble features characters
with their own goals and aspirations – DeNiro needs to win money gambling on
football games; a mental patient (played by a funny, restrained Chris Tucker)
just wants to find his way out of the hospital; Weaver is desperate to see her
family whole again – and Russell weaves the strands of plot and character
together in a nicely handled balancing act. By the time the movie involves a
high-stakes dance competition such developments seem only natural.
Cooper and Lawrence have pleasant chemistry that’s fraught
with crackling irreverence. They’re drawn to each other by their inappropriateness,
each with a tendency to flatly state what should not be shared in polite
company. They have no filters. At their first meeting, he bluntly asks how her
husband died. They bond over their shared experiences with antidepressant
medications. There’s a certitude to their speech, a hard edge to their
movements, and yet a hesitancy in the eyes, as if they’re convincing themselves
as much as the rest of the world that they’re okay. She ambushes him while
jogging with a sharp “Hey!” They run together until they end up in front of a
diner. “Do you want to eat here?” he asks. It’s a date. They speak with the
sparkling speed of the wittiest romcoms, but spit each line as if wedging it
into the moment, as if the words can’t be contained. Altogether, the strong
ensemble inhabit the roles with care and nuance, bringing the broader
tendencies of the screenplay pleasingly down to earth with Russell’s casual
camerawork assisting.
It’d be easy for the film to turn cutesy or schmaltzy and,
though it’s certainly an easy crowd-pleaser, it treats the characters’ mental
problems with a degree of seriousness where a lesser film would use them as a
simple plot device or, worse yet, an affliction for which romance is a perfect
panacea. No, instead Russell
builds a satisfying Hollywood ending that accepts the characters for who they
are, recognizes their individual capacities for change, and dares to find them
a happy ending that fits just right. As far as the genres and character types
Russell’s dealing with are concerned, he’s not exactly reinventing the wheel,
but isn’t it nice that he’s managed to make just about the best possible wheel
he could?
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