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JOY Send This Review to a Friend
Jennifer Lawrence is always interesting to watch, and she is the anchor for a story that flips between being interesting and becoming over the top. “Joy,’ written and directed by David O. Russell, spins a tale based on the real story of a woman who invents a “Miracle Mop.” As Joy Mangano, Lawrence fights her way to success, deals with family problems, and bests businessmen who try to cheat her. It is a story of a woman coming into her own, and because she’s played by Lawrence, the film gets a much-needed lift.
Joy is determined to be somebody. She has a taste for invention. She has an ex-husband, Tony (Édgar Ramierez), who still resides in her home. Her mother Terry (Virginia Madsen) prefers sticking to her bedroom. Her egotistical father, Rudy (Robert De Niro) has a girlfriend Trudy (Isabella Rossellini), and there is also Joy’s half-sister Peggy (Elizabeth Röhm), who is jealous of anything Joy might achieve.
Life looks brighter when Joy invents her so-called “Miracle Mop” that one can wring out and put in a washing machine. Trudy is willing to invest in a mop-making operatiom. When Joy meets slick entrepreneur Neil Walker, played by Bradley Cooper, he manages to get her mop demonstrated on a television cable network telephone order show. The pitch by the regular sales lady flops, but when joy persuades Walker to get her on the show to do her own sales pitch, after a nervous start, she wows the audience, the phones strart ringing, the orders pour in and her mop is mopping up.
Trouble brews when Joy learns that she is being screwed out of her patent. That’s when she has to summon all of her skills and blackmail a honcho into returning the rights to her. That part seems all too glib, but it does lead to a woman’s triumph, an outcome right for this age.
There are hints that a romance could blossom between Walker and Joy, but the film keeps it as a friendly competitor relationship with Joy now running her company and assuming an air of executive authority. Good luck if you buy all of this, but there is always Lawrence. Reviewed December 14, 2015.
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