Critic's Choice: 'Silver Linings Playbook'

By Kenneth Turan

Nov. 20, 2012 12 AM PT

If you follow the movies, you’ve long heard about “Silver Linings Playbook,” David O. Russell’s film that took the Oscar-predictive People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. If you’re smart, you’ll see it right now, before all your friends tell you how good it is and ruin your chances of enjoying it for yourself. Rich in life’s complications, it will make you laugh, but don’t expect it to fit in any snug genre pigeonhole. Dramatic, emotional, even heartbreaking, as well as wickedly funny, it stars Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence doing wonderful work as a pair of obsessive, unbalanced individuals whose lives threaten to spiral out of control on a daily basis. This film has the rare gift of going its own way, a complete success from a team of singular talents.

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