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6 Pleasantly Surprising Things About Silver Linings Playbook

If there’s a dark horse with a real chance in this year’s Oscar race, it might just be Silver Linings Playbook. Now everyone’s saying it’s going to be Argo because everyone loves Ben Affleck all of a sudden, or rather they always loved him and found all the hatred to be just SO UNFAIR and now that he has done things that aren’t absolutely terrible we’re therefore going to give him every award there is to give a person. There are some who contend that Lincoln is still the pick to beat because it has the most nominations, it has the Spielberg factor, it has the Daniel Day-Lewis thing, and it has the topical advocacy aspect that if only government acted this way Obama would be able to save the country like Honest Abe did way back when. Hollywood has a tendency for delusions of grandeur. The delusions portrayed in Silver Linings Playbook, though, are one of the many charms about the movie that help maintain its place in the awards conversations.

[h2]4: It’s Actually a Good Romantic Comedy[/h2]

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Some attention leading up to the Academy Awards would be good for this movie, because it actually makes a really excellent Valentine’s Day feature. Most Valentine’s movies that get billed as romantic comedies end up being 5% comedic, 5% romantic, and 90% boring and cheesy. I know they make money but I’m convinced that no one actually likes them. People are just bored to varying degrees.

Still, I don’t think there has been a movie that fit (albeit somewhat unconventionally) under the rom-com label that has been this strong and well received since 500 Days of Summer, a vastly different movie but one that found its story and characters first, and then had its genre applied to it after the fact, rather than most movies of this type that do things in precisely the reverse order. Silver Linings Playbook is one of those bizarre comedies that you laugh at throughout, and by the end think to yourself, wait a minute…that was actually romantic! I’m a dude, how do I process this? The answer: embrace it, because although the label has come to define a movie marketed to women the same way cosmetics and clothes are, when a good product breaks through, it deserves to be celebrated.

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