Basically “The Fighter” as a love story

Silver Linings Playbook

I don’t know why Shii didn’t like the movie, nor do I know why the film got so many accolades. In my book, “The Fighter” was easily the better film. But, back to what we have at hand: A simple but cute film. Everything about the film is nice and lovable, yet at the same time I don’t really think anything in it stands out (not even Jennifer Lawrence who I thought was much greater in “Winter’s Bone”).

Lovable is the key word here. The main characters are so incredibly cute together, because they both are misunderstood underdogs. The way both of them are being looked down upon makes it easy for you to want to root for them, to desire for them to finally be together. It is certainly true that the film lives through its actors who do a decent job, but at the same time this is a Hollywood fairytale at its best. Start off with a guy and a girl hitting rock bottom and give them determination, love and hope – not to mention a final achievement which makes the entire cast falling into each other’s arms with happiness and go crazy with enthusiasm. Sometimes, though, Hollywood fairytales are exactly what I am looking for (especially on a long flight where I am not going to feel very well by definition), and “Silver Linings Playbook” delivers.

There is something special about Jennifer Lawrence. Like I said, I love love love her in “Winter’s Bone”. Of course I never saw the “Hunger Games” (and probably never will), but I am still convinced that “Winter’s Bone” is her most brilliant role. The tough but vulnerable girl – she does it so incredibly well in “Winter’s Bone”, even if the same description fits her Tiffany to the T. Strangely though, Lawrence is the kind of actress who I imagine is the exact opposite of everyone else – relatively down to earth but with a foul mouth and lacking anything remotely reminiscent of elegance. I am totally looking forward to what she will do next.

I think the main characters’s mental instability is probably what makes the film most interesting and leads critics all over the place to call the film ‘meaningful’. I have to admit that it made me thinking too – what is crazy, what is normal, how fucked up do you have to be for it to be too much? If you throw over a table out of anger, does that make you a mental case? If you ask me, most people are crazy and I only know few people who did not engage in questionable stalking activities. These kinds of thoughts were in my head when following the film’s main character throughout all those trials with his clearly loving and worried family, and for a similarly crazy girl to help him get out of it is obviously too beautiful to be true. Sometimes you want a film to do exactly what you want, and “Silver Linings Playbook” delivers.

Back to “The Fighter”: I liked that it was much rougher, and ultimately less textbook-Hollywood. Neither Mark Wahlberg nor Christian Bale were shy of showing their ugly sides, whereas Cooper and Lawrence were just immensely cute-looking together. Without the somewhat sappy love story, “The Fighter” was 100% about jumping over your own shadows and becoming something greater than you thought you could. Or maybe I just liked it more because I saw it first, and “Silver Linings Playbook” is so similar to it in concept that I figured they were by the same director even though I had no idea about it before the viewing.

If you don’t have a strong allergy against happy, inspiring Hollywood endings, by all means watch the film. It has Jennifer Lawrence in it. As for me, I thought about the film for a long time after seeing it, and felt inspired myself.