Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper (The Weinstein Company)

Perhaps it’s appropriate that David O. Russell, a director whose most famous career moment is a video clip of him verbally abusing Lily Tomlin, has made one of the brightest and most endearing films about bipolar disorder in Silver Linings Playbook. I’m not sure what goes on in Russell’s head, but the journey taken by Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), a newly released asylum patient looking to rebuild his life, is charming, earnest and vividly funny.

Adapted from Matthew Quirk’s 2008 novel of the same name, Silver Linings Playbook features Cooper through motions about as distant as possible from his more-famous turns in the Hangover series. As Pat, a schoolteacher who was locked away after viciously beating a man he caught having sex with his wife, Cooper gets to exercise his Actors Studio-training in a role that ranges from deep sadness to twitchy explosiveness.

Jennifer Lawrence, playing a young, manic-depressive widow named Tiffany, is just as strong. Just as broken and unbalanced as Pat, it’s Tiffany who barters the protagonist what he thinks he wants: For being her partner in an upcoming dance competition, Tiffany will reconnect Pat with his estranged wife.

Already with one Oscar nomination under her young belt for the Ozark gothic Winter’s Bone, Lawrence is being projected to bag another for this film, and for good measure. Enchanting as she might be, there’s also something sweetly dangerous about Tiffany. She could be exactly the kind of friend Pat needs; then again, she’s just as likely to go off in a fit of rage.

Actually, there’s not an unremarkable performance in Silver Linings Playbook, particularly true when considering Pat’s parents, played by Jacki Weaver and Robert De Niro. Weaver’s doting Philadelphia mom—always at the ready with snacks when the Eagles are playing—is the loving antithesis of the monstrous gang leader she played in 2010’s Animal Kingdom.

De Niro, following a long string of muddling comedies (particularly a few co-starring Ben Stiller), finally gets a comic role that also taps into his darker arts. Pat Sr. might be a concerned dad, but he’s also No. 1 Eagles fan—so hardcore, in fact, that he’s been banned from the stadium. The manic devotion De Niro pours into Pat Sr. often clouds whether he cares more about his son’s mental recovery or the Eagles’ ability to cover the spread.

Chris Tucker appears as Pat’s hospital buddy, and though the Rush Hour star still cracks wise with every line, there’s a biting sadness in his character’s own emotional imbalance.

The Fighter, Russell’s 2010 film, brought the writer and director back to the cinematic forefront after his 2004 misfire I (Heart) Huckabees. (Also the source of his anti-Tomlin tirade.) And while that, too, explored the balance between personal conviction and mental impairments, Silver Linings Playbook takes that struggle to far more intimate places.

The camerawork at the outset is as skittish and frazzled as the characters it tracks; as Pat mellows, so does the artistry. But Silver Linings Playbook never loses its edge. Russell has tossed his cast a constantly witty script, and no one fails to deliver.

But it comes back to Cooper and Lawrence, who display some of the best screen chemistry seen in a while. That they are a pair of movie stars with their own franchises—Cooper and his Hangover misadventures, Lawrence in her Hunger Games and X-Men reboot—is entirely hidden. Silver Linings Playbook is smart, finely crafted and emotionally consuming. Codependency has seldom been this sweet.

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Silver Linings Playbook
Written and directed by David O. Russell, based on the novel by Matthew Quirk
With Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Shea Wigham, John Ortiz and Julia Stiles
Rated R for language, mental health issues, violence and Eagles fans.
Running time 120 minutes