Movie Review: Silver Linings Playbook

ROGER EBERT
By Roger

★★★---One of the ingenious and sort of brave accomplishments of Russell's screenplay (inspired by a novel by Matthew Quick) is the way it requires both father and son to face and deal with their mental problems and against all odds finds a way to do that through both an Eagles game and a dance contest. We're fully aware of the plot conventions at work here, the wheels and gears churning within the machinery, but with these actors, this velocity and the oblique economy of the dialogue, we realize we don't often see it done this well. "Silver Linings Playbook" is so good, it could almost be a terrific old classic. [link]