I wasn’t crazy about “Silver Linings Playbook,” and I’m a bit baffled by all the accolades it’s received. Did this disjointed rom-com really deserve Oscar nominations in every acting category? Sure, Jennifer Lawrence would be riveting reading the back of a cereal box, but Bradley Cooper struggled to seem naturalistic, while Robert De Niro played Robert De Niro.
I’m 100 percent behind Jacki Weaver’s nomination for playing Cooper’s long-suffering mother and De Niro’s long-suffering wife, though. Even if the role of the peacemaking matriarch was criminally underwritten, Weaver imbued it with humanity and delivered the film’s most memorable line in impeccable Philadelphian: “I’m making crabby snacks and homemades!”
Crabby snacks and homemades should be at the top of discerning Oscar fans’ party menus this year: Nominees rarely provide such straightforward recipe suggestions, so this is a rare treat that should not be passed up. (Usually we’re left to our own devices, leading to menu items like The Squids Are All Right, the Harvey WALL-E-Banger, and Brie of Life.) But those of us who were not raised in Philly must first make a determination: What are crabby snacks and homemades?
Weaver has forgotten, but the Internet has not. Crabby snacks are, to quote the Matthew Quick novel on which “Silver Linings Playbook” was adapted, “buttered crabmeat and orange cheese on English muffins.” Homemades are homemade egg pasta. The juxtaposition of these two recipes in “Silver Linings Playbook’s” script echoes the tonal confusion of the film: Where crabby snacks are lowbrow, convenient and highly processed, homemades are old-world, labor intensive, and (as the name suggests) made from scratch. Serving them together makes about as much sense as culminating a film about mental illness with a wager on a dance competition made by someone with a gambling problem. And yet here we are.