Silver Linings Playbook

You are thinking- hey, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence- what's not to like? Hmmmm. I'll tell you. Being in the company of people with OCD, ADD, sex addiction, obsession and bipolar disorder with restraining orders is not always a basket of fun.  Not that it isn't doable but midway through this movie- just when you want to run out of the theater screaming- it CHANGES! Now it is a ballroom dance competition, and football betting,etc, and SUDDENLY the mental illness is no longer relevant. You mean to say after sitting in the theater begging Bradley Cooper to take his seroquil, suddenly the viewer is set free like a bird to watch him dance like Fred Astaire? oh yes. Not that it isn't a relief. But this movie needed to make up its mind- you don't cure mental illness and become the sane one in the room by waltzing with an equally nutty woman who becomes sexually promiscuous the second she feels any rejection.
Robert DeNiro left his career in the ashes long ago. It's been a 10 year decline, and this is another of the same. I guess actors like Cooper and Lawrence will do anything - not a bad idea in a town where your career can disappear, and you are left being fodder for Dancing with the Stars and the National Enquirer's "where are they now" section- but these actors are better than this material.  Shockingly, so many critics liked this and found not ONE thing to say about the bizarre script- I am gobsmacked.  So I will assume I have lost part of my mind, and I missed something (but I doubt it). So I'll compromise- instead of 1.5 stars, I will give it 2.  Good luck with that.