Wednesday, January 30, 2013

It's ok to be a bit mad













I have to admit this movie is special, it's one of the very few romantic comedies that didn't annoy me too much. But that really doesn't make this a good movie. Pat (Bradley Cooper) is released from a mental institution and taken to his parents house by his mother (Jacki Weaver). His father (Robert De Niro) seems surprised they let his son out and on we go unwrapping the past. The less you know the better your time passes watching it, so I'll leave it to just that. Bradley Cooper didn't pass as the son of Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver, he's missing the Italian aspect of it quite heavily. And speaking of Robert De Niro, he does an amazing performance in this one, despite that one tear filled Oscar bait moment. But what the hell, he surely deserves the nomination and it's not that often you can say that about his performances anymore. And since pretty much everyone in the cast got an Oscar nomination, I'll give out my opinion on them. Bradley Cooper's nomination I just can't understand, he's rather bland throughout the movie and certainly didn't give me any reason to believe he has some mental problems. Jennifer Lawrence however was quite great as she usually is, so the nomination there went to the right address. And finally Jacki Weaver, her part was overshadowed by De Niro, but still she managed to push through as a believable mother in middle of all that madness, maybe not exactly Oscar worthy, but a fine performance none the less.

The biggest problem with this movie was the main character and how his illness is portrayed. It's all just warm hearted fun. Just as an example the scene where Pat accidentaly hits his mother while going through a mental episode, it's portayed as a funny moment. All the while he's supposed to be a bipolar person with anger management issues. I'd see that as a rather scary moment, but no, it's made to be funny so it wouldn't go too deep into the issue. So now the main character's illness is nothing more than a funny gimmick. But as it's brought up so often I kind of lost interest to it and thus to the whole character. The father was actually the character I found most invested in, at least he seemed like a real human being with real problems and emotions. Too bad he was just a supporting character in this movie. And the weird thing is that this movie tries to bring out the drama behind the comedy, so it doesn't shy away from the drama alltogether, but really I think they chose the wrong moments to bring out. In the end this was nothing more than light and quite warm hearted entertainment, something that kept me entertained through it but left me very little to go with.
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