First of all, as I always do when I write a review in IMDb, I'll state clearly again my astonishment with the rating. I insist: looks like something's wickedly wrong with IMDb...

Now for the movie. Well, it's not horrible. It's watchable. But the strings show everywhere. With this I mean that to anyone with film knowledge, it's a PRODUCT. A product crafted with the Oscars in view, like everything the Weinsteins do. They sometimes make it good ("The King's Speech", "Shakespeare in Love"), sometimes they make it awful ("The Master", "Django Unchained"). This is kind of midway.

Why do I say the strings show? Well, for anyone that has read a couple of basic screen writing manuals, it shows. It definitely shows. The script is so by-the-book that that's the only reason for the absurd second halve of the movie, the it's-so-stupid-it's-unbelievable double bet thing. I won't get much into it for spoilers reason, but if you've seen the film you know what I'm talking about. Not to speak about the whole dance nonsense or even the possibility itself that such a bet could ever take place with at least one non-retarded adult witness involved. And the ending with all the characters gathered in the same physical place for no other reason than to fulfill one of the more hackneyed writer's Bible Commands??

In the good side (the silver linings side?) the idea of displaying a drama involving characters with mental disorders we don't know much about helps us to care more about the real cases outside the movie. Only that I read somewhere among the users reviews that such illnesses are not faithfully displayed. And that's bad. Makes me wonder if the bipolar disorder wasn't really what interested the director- screenwriter, but only the possible awards (we know very well by now that Academy voters love mental illness in a drama).

Which leads me to David O. Russell. Like Paul Thomas Anderson, his work starts to show the egotistic perversion of a self-acclaimed "artist". I've commented how flawed the script is. The direction is worse. It's mediocre. His pseudo-documentary- style moving camera only makes me dizzy.

I insist, it's a watchable movie. But Oscar-worthy???