Silver Linings Playbook Movie Review

Director David O. Russell has become something of a specialist in staging chaotic family scenarios with emotions running to a fever pitch and pushing the comedy of the moment nearly to the breaking point. He did it several times in his sophomore effort Flirting with Disaster, which had Ben Stiller on a cross-country search for his birth parents, and then most recently in The Fighter with boxer Mark Wahlberg and his girlfriend, played by a tough Amy Adams, squaring off against his seventeen or so sisters. In Silver Linings Playbook, his newest film that he both directed and wrote (adapted from the novel by Matthew Quick) brings together just about every character, lead and supporting, under one roof for a scene that would be greatly comedic if it weren’t also somewhat tragic at the same time. It’s a scene that I thought just about went over the edge of reason, but Russell brings it back to earth before things get out of hand.

Flirting with Disaster Movie Review

One of the most criminally undervalued comedies of the 90s was written and directed by a man was an Oscar nominee this year for the critically acclaimed The Fighter. But back in 1996 he made a modest comedy, his follow-up to the indie hit Spanking the Monkey. Sporting a great cast and some fantastic comedy writing (combining situational comedy with great one-liners), Flirting with Disaster deserves a lot more notice than it has gotten over the years.

The Fighter Movie Review: One Fights and the Other Boxes

That David O. Russell’s The Fighter is “based on a true story” is not what makes it so good. After all, everybody’s life is a true story, but the vast majority of them wouldn’t make even watchable movies. Anyway, “based on a true story” is always a misleading entry into a movie. No matter how much truth is in the screenplay (in this case the product of Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson), the writers always end up playing fast and loose with some story elements.

I can’t say how much of the story of brothers Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund, professional boxers from Lowell, Massachusetts, is true or not. But looking at Micky’s list of professional fights on Wikipedia, it’s clear that his late-stage successful career has been truncated for dramatic effect. Not that this matters much, but it serves to highlight how even a film as steeped in realism as this one can play with facts to enhance not only the dramatic power of the narrative, but to keep the plot within manageable constraints.