A Silver Lining or just a bit grey?

So I feel like I'm the one in a million person that didn't get on board with this film, I know I missed the boat with all the hype it caused during the Oscars, but I just can't quite see what everyone else does? Silver Linings Playbook, a rom-com about mental illness, ballroom dancing and the Philadelphia Eagles. I wish I knew why. It’s a slow, repetitive, meandering, mostly overacted little picture—perfectly agreeable but nothing. I have never been able to tolerate the pointless, meat-headed, masturbatory cinema of self-indulgent writer-director Mr. Russell, especially the criminally boring Three Kings and the extremely pretentious I Heart Huckabees. The ridiculously titled Silver Linings Playbook, not in the same league as his 2010 film, The Fighter, doesn’t do for Bradley Cooper what that movie did for Mark Wahlberg, but it does suggest that the eccentric Mr. Russell has learned a few things about where to place a camera. For starters there’s Bradley Cooper, who’s built a solid following by devoting his entire career to trashy comedies, so we got assorted loathsome Hangover remedies, and Cooper got a 'most google image search' association. Unfortunately for us Brits it's very unlikely that any of us saw him the critically acclaim production of the Elephant man in Williamsburg and so we probably didn't have any idea that Cooper actually considers himself a thespian & potential Oscar winner. The movie is a mess, but there is some evidence that Mr. Russell kicked and nudged and tweaked his star into doing something besides resting on his George Clooney charm and killer smile. He actually does some acting. Cooper plays Pat, a bipolar high-school history teacher and former athlete who returns home to Philadelphia after an eight-month meltdown in a mental hospital. Subject to irrational mood swings and violent rages, he fully lost it when his wife cheated with another teacher. Pat beat him up, lost his job, his marriage, his house and his freedom, and he was sent away on a plea bargain. Now he's returned, in the custody of his equally crazy parents, and determined to get back in shape, rebuild his life and win his wife back. His father (Robert De Niro), who is as crazy as he is, just wants Pat to return to what matters most in life—the religion of worshipping the Philadelphia Eagles. Pat runs, works out, wears garbage bags to sweat, tells us fun facts about American history while breaking his wife’s restraining order, and wakes his parents in the middle of the night ranting about Ernest Hemingway. Between tirades, he meets an emotionally disturbed widow named Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) who has been fired from her job after having sex with 11 people in her office - Men & Women, Pat particularly likes that, what man wouldn't? Tiffany, who turned goth tart after her policeman husband was killed playing Good Samaritan on his way home from buying lingerie at Victoria’s Secret, offers to reunite Pat with his wife if he will partner with her in a dance competition (her sister is his wife's best friend apparently - I got lost there too) During long rehearsals in the garage to songs by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, a mutual attraction blossoms, thwarted by awkward idiosyncrasies that keep the movie moving from one absurdity to another - It really does get worse... The football part of the movie—about how Pat’s crazy father, family members and friends bet their life savings and future on an Eagles game in a parlay that depends on at least a 5-point score in the dance competition—is so confusing I never did figure it out, and couldn’t care less. (Seems the father, who has been banned from the Eagles stadium for repeatedly starting riots, has invested everything in his beloved team in the hope of financing a cheesesteak business or something like that at least) None of this makes sense. It all ends in what would ordinarily seem anticlimactic, except for one thing: how can anything be anticlimactic if there isn’t much of a movie in the first place? There’s nothing wrong with the overrated Jennifer Lawrence that some serious acting lessons couldn’t improve. The rest of the actors are pretty much on their own. Nothing mature or thoughtful here, which leaves Cooper to carry the show alone. He’s played it comfortable and he’s played it safe. Showing it’s fun to be bipolar, he could have played it like Jerry Lewis. Instead, he’s starting to realize the rewards of taking acting to a deeper level. Maybe they really should've killed Tiffany off at the end? But no, happily ever after Mr & Mrs 'Crazy'. I will add this to the list of 'Films people say they enjoy but really have no idea what's going on'