Watched this last night with the wife and enjoyed it. It does start off... weird, I guess is the best way to put it. The first 1/2 hour or so is almost hard/uncomfortable to watch but Bradley Cooper does a good job of getting you to route for him despite his "issues". De Niro does his usual excellent work as the flawed but caring father and the empathy created by the poor mother (Jacki Weaver) trying to just hold everyone together was palpable. Jennifer Lawrence also did an excellent job adding dimension to her damaged and vulnerable character and the dancing scenes with her certainly gave me a new appreciation of her *ahem* physical attributes as well.
That said there was one aspect that bothered and stuck with me. Without hopefully giving too much away, towards the end there's a conspiring scene between a few characters that had me questioning how/why so many seemed to be artificially pushing the romantic leads together. Perhaps I missed something but it seemed like there was a touch of missing back story and/or explanation to me.
Otherwise I'd say weird but wonderful :35: out of :5:
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