In a recent Director Roundtable discussion organized by The Hollywood Reporter, David O. Russell discussed how he came to work on the the 2010 film The Fighter. Russell acknowledged that it was exactly the sort of conventional projected he would have dismissed years earlier, deciding it didn’t have the requisite offbeat components to stir his interest. He was admittedly at a career low point, which may have been what eventually motivated him to ask himself, as he put it, “Why don’t you try to do this really good?” I, for one, think that’s exactly what he accomplished, investing a familiar storyline with just the right amount of edge, veracity and nothing-to-lose creativity to elevate it.

In a way, he seems to be trying for the same thing with his latest effort, Silver Linings Playbook. Adapted from the 2008 novel by Matthew Quick, the film seems built around the question of whether or not a familiar romantic comedy can be spun into something unique. Can Russell “do this really good?” To that end, what if the standard issue rom-com Manic Pixie Dream Girl (and how Nathan Rabin must wish he’d affixed a “TM” next to that four word term when he coined it) is actually dealing with genuine issues that the film tries to take seriously? In fact, what if damn well everyone onscreen is dealing with some sort of embedded psychological problem that helps explain the sort of questionable decision-making required to make a romantic comedy plot purr like an well-lubed engine?

Bradley Cooper stars in Silver Linings Playbook as Pat Solitano, a young man recently released from a mental hospital, where he was sent after a violent altercation upon finding his wife cheating with another man. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Pat operates with a fervent intensity–whether angry or effusively positive–as he tries to get resettled in his old Philadelphia neighborhood, living with his parents as he gets his life back in order. He’s also certain he can win back his wife, which drives the film’s conflicts as his family and friends try to gently intervene in that process, and a young widow named Tiffany, played by Jennifer Lawrence, exploits Pat’s desire to make contact with his ex to recruit him into being her partner in a local dance competition in which she’s long wanted to take part.

Present this material with well-scrubbed, sunshiny earnestness and it could be the sort of claptrap that Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson yawned their way through a few years back. Russell tries out a mordant, deadpan approach instead, deliberately flattening out the tone in an apparent attempt to make the story’s obvious machinations seem more realistic and honest. There’s no way to disguise, however, that everything in Silver Linings Playbook is hopelessly phony, from large matters such as the uninspired ways that characters come together to the smallest details, exemplified by the local police officer who’s been assigned the Pat Solitano beat, working shifts at all different times of day and night, just so he can be there when our protagonist wavers from the straight line he’s supposed to walk.

Cooper is actually quite good in the film, the first time I’ve ever seen him in a performance that didn’t smack of smug laziness. He realizes that Pat needs to feel dangerous not because of his actions, but strictly because of his unpredictability. It’s not that he could throw a punch, it’s that no one can anticipate when his high emotions will take an ill turn. Lawrence is even better. In her still nascent career, she’s already established a near total inability to be sedate in her craft; she wears the sharp emotions of her characters like a cloak. They deserve better than the muddled mess Russell strands them in. They’re as adrift as their characters. Unfortunately for the performers, the key difference is that there’s no rescue in right.