Review 370: Joy

 

Joy is a depressing experience held together by a bravura performance from Jennifer Lawrence.

The film is about the true story of Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence) a divorced, struggling single mother of three turned self-made millionaire. In the late 80's early 90's, she created her own business empire when she invented the Miracle Mop which became an overnight success. After this, she patented the many other products, often selling them on the Home Shopping Network and QVC. The film is a semi-fictional and inspirational portrayal of how Mangano overcame personal and professional obstacles to rise to the top.

Joy is an unusually stolid film, one that has solid, fascinating, inspiring true story at it's core but doesn't tell that story in a cohesive way.

At the heart of Joy is a story about what it means to believe in yourself: Joy Mangano was a woman who came from a dysfunctional family and who channeled that frustration by inventing products. In creating these inventions, she drew inspiration from her personal experiance and in doing so tried to find a way to improve the lives of loads of families. However she had her family to worry about, she was embezzled and defrauded by manufactures of her inventions, she had a lot of obstacles to overcome. Unfortunately, we never get a sense of her success and over coming the odds as her family repeatedly take advantage of her in almost comical ways. Nothing seems to go right for her, and she spends most of the movie getting screwed or exploited by her family. And nothing about this is funny, quite frankly, I found it to be rather disheartening and gloomy.

The film focuses so much on Mangano's family life and not enough on her success. We get that she came from a tough background to get to the successful place she is now, but we don't see enough of it and it becomes depressing to watch her and her family argue, all this focus on this particular aspect just doesn't make the film as inspirational as it should have been. So much of this film focuses on the years where she doesn't believe and since that's all David O'Russell focuses on

 

The whole film feels jumbled and choppily edited together. For instance, they keep mentioning that Joy has two children and you see lots of her daughter but very little of her son, we never see her interact with him onscreen.

Writer/director David O'Russell's direction is uneven, the approach he took to conveying Joy Mangano's story just makes the film as a whole feel very weighed down as well as depressing.

However, the production design, recreating the last 80's and early 90s, is brilliant, the cinematography is gorgeous, the costume design is terrific and richly vibrant, the props are wonderfully crafted, the make up is superbly crafted.

The acting is also superb, Jennifer Lawrence was by far the best part of this film. She captures her determination to make a difference, her refusal to be beaten by the odds, her frustration over loving her family because on the one hand they were entirely dysfunctional and on the other hand they loved her. She humanises her and makes. Joy is the rock of her family, holding everything together and forfeiting her dreams to make everyone else's come true. The challenges of her family ended up making her a fiercer person. Joy Mangano was a woman with a huge imagination, she could see the brighter side of things and be her own hero - if only we got to see 

Robert De Niro is also highly effective in the movie as Rudy Mangano, Joy's father. He loves his daughter, but he's made some ill-conceived descisions in his life and he has anger issues making a very hard to live with type of person and De Niro plays that very well.

Virginia Madsen is excellent in the film playing Terry Mangano, Joy's loopy mother, all she does all day is sit in bed and watch Soap Opera's and lives in her own world. She's just so incapable of taking care of herself or anybody else; she's a helpless creatures and she blames the world for all of her problems. Her love of Soaps stems from the characters always knowing what to say and always knows what to do in order to triumph and Terry could never imagine that; Even telling Joy that she loves her because it's too frightening. Her marrige to Ruby was so dysfunctional that she can't face who she is or move forward.

Madsen makes you feel her desperation to be those characters in every scene that she's in.

Diane Ladd is also very strong playing Mimi, Joy's grandmother, she has a delightfully eccentric quality to her, she was the person Joy Mangano was closest too. She inspires Joy to fight for her dream

Isabella Rossellini is also good in the film playing Trudy, Rudy Mangano's boyfriend and Joy's financier, she's the fun but cooky type, she comes into this dysfunctional family and has to try to fit in and support them without loosing her head. Also without her support, Joy Mangano would never have got funding for her inventions

Edgar Ramirez is also terrific playing Tony Miranne, Joy's husband, he loves Joy and is ready to stand by and support her. He doesn't care if she becomes his boss, he'll stand by her side till the very end which is a very noble and honest thing to do.

Elizabeth Rohm is also effective as Peggy, Joy's half sister. Joy and her were close friends during childhood, but deep down she was supposedly jealous of how clever Joy was and how inventive she was. She wanted to be her and when she's grown up she interferes with her life, she tries to make up money for her company and makes decisions on Joy's behalf without her consent. Between being siblings where one has the magic and the other feels like she's never seen, never heard and never appriciated enough and affected her deeply. Her character is a real pain.

Regretably, Bradley Cooper isn't in the film that much. He only appeared in a handful of scenes in the latter half of the film which is a shame because his few minutes of screentime play a huge significant part in Mangano's life  which we don't see enough of. Nevertheless Cooper makes use of those few minute and brings them life with own brand of charisma.

Joy has a potentially inspiring true story at its centre and lots talent behind and in front of the camera but is never as joyous as it should be, 2/5.

The Anonymous Critic.