"Silver Linings Playbook" Movie Review: Bradley and Jennifer Go Dancing on the Edge David O. Russell's modest indie romcom offers nothing original but the chance to spend a couple hours in the hating-then-loving company of two engaging stars Silver Linings Playbook Director: David O. Russell Studio: The Weinstein Company Actors: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro For some movies, a film festival spotlight can feel like a third-degree burn. A picture of modest virtues, like David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook, may trip on the red carpet and wilt in the heat of a Saturday evening screening at the cavernous Roy Thomson Hall. But the Toronto Film Festival revels in celebrity, and this intimate indie romcom happens to be headlined by the stars of the biggest comedy hit of the past few years and the all-time top-grossing female-oriented action film. So if Bradley Cooper doesn't mind sharing his Hangover luster, and Jennifer Lawrence her Hunger Games éclat - throw in Robert De Niro too, since he plays Cooper's dad - then a movie that would be more appropriate in a lower Manhattan art house will get the megawatt TIFF treatment. Russell built his indie rep on two kinda-comedies, Spanking the Monkey and Flirting With Disaster, that placed the modern American family in the middle of Dysfunction Junction and watched with satire and some sympathy as crises whizzed past, imperiling all standing there but never quite killing them. After Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees, he returned to his fractured-family theme with The Fighter, a true-life Sports Inspirational movie that often played like acute, high-volume farce. Mom (Melissa Leo) and one of the kids (Christian Bale) were wildly unstable, but everyone loved everyone else. The Motion Picture Academy loved them too; both actors won Oscars. READ: Corliss's review of David O. Russell's The Fighter Silver Linings Playbook, Matthew Quirk's 2008 novel, is so fond of the neurotics in its pages that it might have been written as a spec script for Russell. The father, Pat Solitano, a bookie with dreams of opening a cheesesteak restaurant, has been banned from attending games of his beloved Philadelphia Eagles because he's picked too many fights with other fans. His son Pat Jr., a former high school teacher, is certifiably nuts - he has a four-year stay in an asylum to prove it, for assaulting a fellow teacher whom he found screwing Pat's wife Nikki in the shower - and, on his release, believes he can reconcile with Nikki if he just shapes up and stays positive. This is a long shot, like the Eagles winning the Super Bowl ever. They got there twice, in 1981 and 2005; lost both times. Pat Jr. should pay more attention to the young woman, Tiffany, who has acquired a reputation as an easy lay in her depression after her policeman husband died. Tiffany would be a perfect addition to the Solitano family. READ: Belinda Luscombe on the early David O. Russell movies by subscribing to TIME So the Quirk book is now a Russell movie, with De Niro as Pat Sr., Cooper as Pat Jr. and Lawrence as Tiffany. All that star power may have made the writer-director averse to experiment, for Silver Linings Playbook is his most timid and conventional feature. It's the kind of movie where a character does something obvious for the first hour (like Pat Sr."s attempts to get close to his son by begging him to watch Eagles games with him) and then, in the second hour, explains the obvious (to quote loosely: "I begged you to watch the games with me so I could get close to you"). It's also another movie set in Philadelphia - actually, Ridley Park, just across the city line - where nobody even tries to speak in the area's distinct nasal twang. Finally, this is a story so deeply comfortable with narrative clichés that it climaxes with... a dance contest. Will Pat and Tiffany bond as they practice for their big night? Will they earn a high enough score to keep Pat Sr., who has bet his savings on the outcome, from going broke? Will the sun rise tomorrow over Ben Franklin's statue at the top of City Hall? READ: Mary Pols on Bradley Cooper in The Hangover Part II One last question: Then why go? To see some big-time actors make themselves at home in this ramshackle structure. Cooper has exactly the ferocious drive that may have put Pat Jr. away for a while, plus a humane wit that gives Pat Jr. the potential to grow out of his illness. De Niro - no longer the raging bull, now the Focker father-in-law - squints and screams and sighs with an exasperation that may reflect his current career status, but which also suits the personality of a man concerned that his own anger-management issues may have bloomed even more dangerously in his son. Jacki Weaver, the Australian actress Oscar-nominated as the killer mom in Animal Kingdom, is the civilizing influence in the Solitano home: Marge Simpson to Pat Sr."s Homer. And Chris Tucker, the ingratiating countertenor comic from Jackie Brown and the Rush Hour movies, brightens the screen whenever he shows up as one of Pat Jr."s friends from the asylum; it's Tucker's first non-Jackie Chan film in 15 years. READ: Corliss on Chris Tucker in the Rush Hour movies The performances of these actors are reason enough to go. The reason to stay is Lawrence. Just 21 when the movie was shot, Lawrence is that rare young actress who plays, who is, grown-up. Sullen and sultry, she lends a mature intelligence to any role, whether as the one sane person in Winter's Bone or as Raven (Mystique) in X-Men: First Class. Her Tiffany at first seems more dangerous than Pat Jr.; she stalks him on his morning jogs and says of herself, "I'm just the crazy slut with the dead husband." But Tiffany has the ability to thaw - slowly, without renouncing her principles or her gravity - and, by luring Pat Jr. into that ridiculous dance contest, to give his life a purpose, other than his daft scheme of reconciling with Nikki. She is clearly Pat Jr."s salvation, just as Jennifer Lawrence is the silver lining is this mostly ordinary playbook. READ: Corliss on Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games