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The best thing about David O. Russell is that he cultivates his disequilibrium. In Silver Linings Playbook, his hero is disturbed and his heroine possibly more so, and his other characters have a grip on reality that is only marginally more secure. Russell might have made them seem the dreaded "q" word — quirky — and OK, he does, a bit, at the end, which broadly conforms to the rom-com template. But until then, Bradley Cooper's Pat Solatano is someone you'd be less likely to dream about than get a restraining order against.

In fact, that's what his wife has done at the start, which finds Pat, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, in a mental hospital — a place where the phrase "silver lining" as in "every cloud has a ... " is a mantra. In the novel by Matthew Quick, he's been there for four years after violently assaulting someone. Here, it's a mere eight months — and he acts like he could have used the extra three-plus years.

After his mother, played by Jacki Weaver, drives him home to the Philly suburbs, he throws A Farewell to Arms through his bedroom window because of the tragic ending, and he smashes furniture outside his psychiatrist's office when "Ma Cherie Amour" — his wedding song — plays in the waiting room.

While Pat pines for the reunion with his wife that he's certain will come, he lives with his mother and obsessive-compulsive father, Robert De Niro's Pat Sr., who has started gambling heavily on the Philadelphia Eagles.

He spends his days working out and running, until his friend Ronnie, played by John Ortiz, invites him to dinner — where Ronnie's wife (Julia Stiles) fixes him up with her widowed sister, Jennifer Lawrence's Tiffany. We think, "Who would fix her sister up with him?" — until we meet Tiffany, and wonder which of the two has more to fear.

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Jacki Weaver and Chris Tucker also help round out a team of actors who score a touchdown with the critics.