I really liked this movie. Will you? That all depends. Depends largely on how much you like the style of sometimes dramatic/sometimes-comedic director David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabees, The Fighter, Three Kings) who’s fully operating in dramedy mode, criss-crossing between dramatic scenes that are hilarious and comedic scenes that are maybe trying just a little too hard. It’s a hard movie to pin down, and the feel-good ending defies credibility, but I mostly enjoyed it, finding the rhythms (which actually mimic the lead character’s bi-polar disorder) easy to get swept up in.
What Works: What the movie does is so subtle, you might not even notice it, but it’s about a lead character who’s bi-polar (Bradley Cooper, whose blue eyes alternate between charismatic and slightly manic/crazy, to good effect) and the movie comes pretty close to replicating that feeling, alternating between serious material and wild comedy, and usually fusing them both in the same scene. I thought that was effective but perhaps easier to admire than really build a great movie around.
However, two things that absolutely work are the performances given by Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. These are two damaged, but still deeply romantic people, and watching them stumble towards a bumpy romance is the type of realistic movie-couple that almost never get onscreen anymore.
What Doesn’t Work: Chris Tucker’s character is one subplot too many, and he never really fits well with anything else in the movie. Likewise, De Niro’s character’s sports betting may get a couple scenes too many. But, overall, if this isn’t a perfect film, it’s still a damn good one.
What I Would Have Done Differently: “Fixing it” by taking out some of the extraneous subplots and smoothing out some of the plot shifts may actually have made it less effective at presenting a portrayal of mental illness from the inside out.