This movie comes with great amount of buzz. A standout at the Toronto film festival, leads the Indie Spirit noms and it has garnered great accolades and Oscar buzz for both the movie and it’s two lead actors, Bradley copper and Jennifer Lawrence. I went into the movie with very high expectations and was not disappointed!
The first 10 minutes were a bit awkward, and I was starting to feel this was going to be one of those movies that critics rave about and I’m just left wondering what I didn’t get. Thankfully that was not the case here. the movie started getting a fabulous rhythm and the performances of both Cooper and Lawrence, as a bipolar man and a mentally unstable girl respectively, kept getting better and better. Jennifer Lawrence especially was very surprising, it is amazing how one look or shot of her onscreen can speak volumes without saying a word. Robert de Niro as the football obsessed, OCD dad is also a fabulous performance and totally deserving of his own oscar buzz.
The storytelling was great, you really don’t see things coming. The information is fed to the viewer in a beautifully rationed manner, just enough to keep the story going, but holding back enough to keep us guessing. I also love how the genre is so hard to pinpoint, yet is has enough of it all to satisfy viewers. It is not really a sports film, but it has sports, not a Drama, but it is dramatic, not a romantic comedy, but romance abounds and it is not a dance film but dance sets the stage. Bonus points: It is set in Philly and the city (and its sports teams) is a character in itself which made me very nostalgic for my time there!
I was in tears by the end, surprised by how what I thought was going to be a very depressing movie ended up being an uplifting story of human emotion. Definetly if you havent watched it – Go!
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