Review of Silver Linings Playbook

For one reason or another I don't see many movies these days, so I had never seen or heard of the two primary actors in this movie, Bradley Cooper and the beautiful Jennifer Laurence. Watching them on screen in this movie, though, has truly been eye opening. They are both brilliant, if not totally realistic, in this film in their depiction of mentally ill people trying to return to "normalcy." The only actor I recognized immediately was Robert DeNiro, and his performance was, I think, his best in may years. The supporting actors in the cast were also uniformly good, especially Chris Tucker. Severe mental illness and other neuroses are not a laughing matter, but this film uses fantastic humor to bring those problems to our attention. And that mentally ill people - rather beautiful people in this film - need love as much, if not more, that the rest of us is something to think about. Despite the subject matter, this is still a romantic comedy. It's poignant as well as terrifically funny. Go see it.