A good movie, probably not so easy for everyone to understand, but I liked it, and I also think this is one of Jennifer Lawrence best roles, if not the best I’ve seen so far. It’s a find-yourself movie, but also a love-story, with a bit of humour and some hard emotional scenes, because the character are deeply troubled to start with. Pat (Bradley Cooper) has been for eight months in a mental institution because he beat his wife’s lover very badly, but even before that he wasn’t exactly easy-going, but he didn’t know why. Once in the hospital he’s been diagnosed as having a bipolar disorder, which explains his drastic, frightening mood swings. Now his mother takes him out of the hospital against the doctor’s advice and brings him home. He’s still difficult, he refuses to take any medicine and can’t think of anything else other than getting his old job back and mostly of all his wife back. He keeps talking about Nikki, saying how much they love each other, even if there is a restraining order against him. He keeps saying that he’s doing well and wants to prove her that, so he starts reading the books that she teaches her students (and then waking up his parents in the middle of the night to complain about the story), and he says that he just needs to see the positive side of things and everything will go well… but it’s a very difficult situation in the house.
His friend Ronnie invites him home for dinner and he goes because Ronnie’s wife Veronica (Julia Stiles) and Nikki are friends and he wants to show her he’s doing fine… Once there he meets Tiffany (Lawrence) who is rather messed up as well. After three years of marriage her husband died and she sort of lost it. She started sleeping around and acting out; she got fired but she survived. That same night he walks her home because she asked him too, and once there she offers him sex but he refuses. So young and so beautiful as she is, it’s easy to assume that nobody ever refused, and this I think was the best thing that anyone could do for her. She hugs him. And then slaps his face: a complicated girl, that's all.
They meet again several times while he’s jogging (we later learn that his mom has been telling her when and where he’s jogging so she can meet him), and they start talking and going out. He finds her crazy ( !! ) but his therapist tells him that maybe being kind to her will show Nikki the kind of sensitive person he has become (great move, doc!). Tiffany tells him that she can give a letter to Nikki if he wants to but he has to do something for her. She wants him to be her partner in a dance competition. He’s not excited about it but does it anyway because he wants to communicate with Nikki and this is the only way. They start practicing every day at her place. Somehow this gives him some kind of stability, because he has somewhere to go every day, something to do, he comes home too tired to get into trouble.. :-p
At first neither his father or her parents are too happy about this, because they think he’s just another one of all the guys who want to take advantage of her for easy sex, while he wants Pat to spend time with him during the Eagles games because he bets on them and he thinks that Pat brings him good luck, and because of this he sends Pat to the game with his brother Jake one Sunday. Pat tries to stay out of trouble, but when some other guys start hitting his brother he gets involved. Pat sr (Robert De Niro) is rather upset, but not as much as Tiffany is because she was home all day waiting for him. She bursts into his house yelling that he had a commitment with her, and when Pat sr starts saying that she ruined everything she manages to change his mind, because apparently she noticed that every time Pat was with her the Eagles won, and if he had been with her that Sunday too they would have won also. Instead, he lost a lot of money. After this conversation, he makes an even bolder bet (rather a dangerous one, I don’t like this kind of things); still, not only he places a bet with his ‘friend’ Randy that the Eagles will won the finale (as suggested by Tiffany because that day Pat will be with her at the dancing competition), he also adds a bet on them! Four judges give points from 1 to 10 to the dance couples, and he bets they’ll get at least a 5. Pat thinks this is all too crazy and wants to back out. At this point, while inside the house Tiffany tells his parents that the only way to make him dance is to tell him that Nikki will be there, outside Pat reads again the letter that she gave him telling him it was Nikki’s reply to his own letter: Pat recognizes in it the same words that Tiffany used when talking about the game and the signs and he finally understands that she wrote it, not Nikki. He doesn’t say anything and the movie moves slowly; we catch a glimpse of Christmas day (Pat and Tiffany with his family and her parents, all together, very nice) and we move on to December 28, the day of the dance competition. As they get there, Tiffany sees Veronica with Nikki!!! She goes out of her mind, tells Veronica that she wants to ruin it for her, then goes to the bar and starts drinking (and any woman drinking alone will be approached by a man in ten seconds max). He finally finds her and takes her to the dance floor where they do their number (not really good, but after all it wasn’t supposed to be) and they get something like 4.9 4.9 4.8 and 5.4 = 5.0!! The other dancers are like “sorry guys” but they start screaming because they did it!! The Eagles won too, they are all hugging and screaming when Pat sees Nikki and goes towards her. The expression on Tiffany’s face says it all, really! Pat says something in Nikki’s ear that we don’t hear but it’s not necessary. They’re getting closure, I suppose, and she won’t be scared of him anymore. After that he looks for Tiffany but she’s gone. His father tells him that she loves him and he shouldn’t mess it up this time. Pat runs out to meet Tiffany and gives her another letter; she thinks it’s for Nikki of course, since he never talked of anything else, but then it starts Dear Tiffany… and he wrote it a week before… :-) They kiss and we can all hope that they’ll live as happily ever after as they possibly can :-p
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