Reviewing Silver Linings Playbook Without Having Seen It

I could have taken this review as an opportunity to crap all over The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 and its lousy theatrical poster that makes it look like the cast is answering a call of “News team, assemble!” But I wont. Because, as much as it pains me to admit it, I very much want to watch Silver Linings Playbook this weekend.

Yes, the movie has a heavy dose of Hollywood cheese to it. (Insane men don’t typically look like GQ models with a three-day beard, for example. And don’t start me on Bradley Cooper being a Philadelphia resident who’s best buddies with Chris Tucker. Have you ever been to that city? The only white people that have black friends play on the Eagles’ offensive line.) Beyond that, though, is a film that: 1. Features two nut jobs falling for each other, which I’m a sucker for because that’s the only kind of relationship I’m ever going to have and 2. Appears to display Robert De Niro acting for the first time in 15 years in scenes where he’s not being reduced to a nipple-talking laughingstock.

Am I the guy out there that loves movie like Silver Linings Playbook? Your Annie Halls, Eternal Sunshines and Garden States? Because the notion they sell resonates with me: If you’re a screwed up guy, there’s an equally-screwed-up-in-all-the-right-ways-for-you woman out there that you’re going to click with. Even if I know it’s BS. Because anyone screwed up enough to understand me is likewise going to be a soulless, self-centered vampire of a being who spends their days alone and masturbating to the point of nerve ending damage. Alas, our fairytale could never be.

Silver Linings Playbook seems like a great date movie. It might not be. It might end with Bradley Cooper consensually eating Jennifer Lawrence like that German cannibal. I’m going to roll the dice and say it doesn’t. So, if you’re a guy with my sort of mentality and have a quirky girl you want to impress, take her to see the film. In my fantasies, doing so would bring the two of you incredibly close together. In reality, you will probably spend the night a neurotic, sweaty-palmed wreck because you finally have a date and she will take several bathroom breaks to covertly text photos of her vulva to the guy she’s planning to screw 15 minutes after you kiss her goodnight. C’est la vie.