The first thing that comes to mind is “did Nancy Meyers have something to do with this?” She didn’t. The culprit is director-writer Justin Zackham, author of The Bucket List screenplay and director of Going Greek. Obviously aimed at silver-haired women and all the squares, schmucks and schmoes who love films about characters who have shiny copper pots hanging in their kitchen (i.e., a classic Meyers signature).

Painful dialogue, broad gestures, winking and signalling at the audience from a mile away…what kind of retardo finds this stuff remotely funny?

Robert De Niro is supposed to be better than pretty good in The Silver Linings Playbook so he probably took this one thinking, “90% of everything is crap….you can’t hit a homer every time at bat…money is money…I’ll just hold my nose and do it,” etc.

The bearded devil from Angel Heart finds De Niro leaving the set of Bang the Drum Slowly and ushers him into a room at a nearby motel. An irritated DeNiro says “whaddaya whaddaya?…I’m set to do Mean Streets and then The Godfather Part II and then Taxi Driver and then 1900 and then The Last Tycoon and New York, New York…whadday want from me?” And the devil cracks open a hard-boiled egg, sprinkles it with salt, turns off the light, fires up a projector and shows De Niro a reel from The Big Wedding and says, “This is what you’ll be doing in 40 years.”