Silver Linings Playbook

Jessica Shonbeck
English 10803
29 August 2016

Silver Linings Playbook

Silver Linings Playbook sheds a light on mental illness; a unique topic in Hollywood. It tells the story of two people, each with their own set of mental challenges, who fall in love despite the other's differences. This movie is a drama, but on Netflix and websites similar to Netflix, the movie is under the comedy category. Silver Linings Playbook's movie poster is enticing, but misleading in it's genre.

After watching the trailer to this movie, I assumed this movie would be a romantic comedy. The trailer showed funny scenes where the characters were comically blunt and really emphasized the relationship between Bradley Cooper's character, Pat and Jennifer Lawrence's character, Tiffany. Watching the movie, I realized that it was much more of a drama than a comedy. It depicted the daily lives and struggles of someone who is aware of their mental issue, but can't do anything to change it. The movie goes much deeper than the trailer alludes to. It teaches the viewer about mental illness and shows that there is no good solution to the problem. It seemed like the director was trying to spread awareness through this movie.

One possible reason for advertising this movie as a comedy is that the director wanted to reach as many people as possible and he thought more people would come out and see the movie if they thought it was be funny. If they had presented the trailer how the movie actually is, people would have been confused about the plot line, and maybe a little uninterested. Exhibiting Silver Linings Playbook as a comedy would make people more interested and more willing to spend their time and money to see a movie about mental illness. The actors that the director, David O. Russell, chose as the leads also helped get people to want to see the movie. Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper are well respected actors who had won awards prior to making this movie. On top of that, they are well liked by their peers and the public. The director used a lot of tools to entice people to come see a movie about mental illness.

The movie poster has a design in the middle that looks like mathematical or scientific equations. Any one without a PhD in the subject would not be able to understand the equations. Mystery is a good tool in alluring people in. Humans have a natural curiosity about them; it's what keeps them alive. When they don't understand something, the majority of them want to learn more about it. This human tendency works to the movie poster's advantage in this situation. When people see the poster they will see equations that they don't understand and wonder why they are relevant to the story. Another strength of the movie poster is the actors that the advertiser choose to put on it. As mentioned earlier, Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper are popular, quality actors and they, by themselves, will attract viewers.

Silver Linings Playbook was purposefully, incorrectly advertised in order to try to get more viewers interested. The point of the movie was to teach the public about mental illness and its problems, and to do that the trailer and the poster had to be enticing.