Joy
Here’s a story that Hollywood has been waiting for: the rags-to-riches saga of Joy Mangano, the entrepreneur and inventor who gave the world… (fanfare of 80s-style synthesiser trumpets) the self-wringing Miracle Mop. Whether the best director to tell that story is the erratic David O Russell is another matter. His last film, retro-styled crime caper American Hustle, was so exuberantly cynical that you can’t quite believe he’s playing with a straight deck in telling the tale of a hard-working woman realising her destiny on the QVC shopping channel.
Executed with much the same quasi-Scorsese whiz-bang as Hustle, though the material rarely seems to call for it, Joy works most convincingly as a vehicle for the no-nonsense warrior-woman persona of Jennifer Lawrence, who comes across personably if a touch coldly. Joy revisits the dysfunctional family milieu of Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, the parallels underlined by the casting: Bradley Cooper is a TV exec, Robert De Niro returns as a cantankerous patriarch. But visually, and narratively, the film feels cluttered – too many people hover with too little to do, notably Virginia Madsen as Joy’s TV-addicted mother.
In telling the story of the woman who invented the Miracle Mop, director-writer David O. Russell, who co-wrote the story with Annie Mumolo, gets off to a wobbly start, builds to a wonderfully satirical middle and ends with a whimper. So, should you see Joy? I'd give it a shot. The invigorating talent of the man behind The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle still shines, even in this uneven muddle.
And did I mention that Jennifer Lawrence is the star? The 25-year-old supernova again proves she can do anything, moving from comic to tragic without missing a beat.
'Jennifer Lawrence's brilliant fairy tale'
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