I suppose we’re all guilty of finding diminishing returns when going again with the tried-and-true. It’s just that much more obvious when we see it from a movie studio. Joy is a once-too-often-to-the-well film, where writer/director David O. Russell has again paraded out the remarkable talents of Jennifer Lawrence while tossing in some beefy roles for Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. Unfortunately with this iteration, he also mixed the same with an unremarkable story, forgettable characters and an almost criminal failure to keep Ms. Lawrence consistent within the confines of a single accent.
Titular punching bag Joy (Lawrence) has missed college in helping out with the fam. And they’ve fallen apart around her – mom (Virginia Madsen) spends all day in bed watching soaps, her ex- (Édgar Ramírez) lives in her basement (wtf?) and now her father (DeNiro) has been tossed out by his third or fourth wife – sorry, couldn’t keep up – put him in the basement with the ex, why not?
It is clear from moment one that every member of the her family and her extended family takes his/her cues from Joy, but no one wants to give her credit for it. This is played up for comic effect, like when Joy rips up floor boards and manipulates a monkey wrench to minimize the damage from mom’s second plumbing blunder of the day – and, in turn, gets nothing but grief. This is kind of a catch-22 situation – if you root for Joy, it’s hard to find the humor here, but if you don’t root for Joy, there’s little reason to watch the film. Still later, dad and the ex create a “laughably” tragic situation on the boat owned by dad’s new girlfriend (Isabella Rossellini). When Joy cleans up a wine glass mess –while everybody else stands and watches, mind you–she cuts her hands badly and consequently gets the inspiration for a new mop design.
After this point, Joy is entirely about the horrors of owning your own business – developing an idea, getting the patents, raising the capital, marketing your product, getting your foot in the door, and being defrauded and unsupported at every turn. I’m not sure I buy exactly how much stonewalling and obstinance comes from Joy’s family – they must know that keeping
her down is precisely detrimental to their own good, no? In turn, Joy becomes a one-woman tribute to overcoming odds in the face of assholes – there is power here, and it is easy to root for Jennifer Lawrence; of course, it would be a tad easier if we could figure out why her accent changes from scene to scene.
Joy bookends with a cover of Belinda Carlisle’s b-side “I Feel Free.” Sountrack entries like this are supposed to enhance our feeling of the heroine as bursting from her confines and getting what she desired through hard work and, let’s face it, a healthy amount of luck. My biggest take from the film is never to go into business for myself – and thus the song mentioned strikes me as a bit lazy, a choice settled upon because it was affordable and fit the film, not because the song has any merit. Subsequently the film itself feels like a cover of Russell’s better works involving his stable trio – films like Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle are both worth your attention far ahead of this one. At the end of the day, Joy will go down as a wonderful -if uneven- performance by Jennifer Lawrence, and little more.
♪Davey O. was a mogul
He knew Oscar a bit
I never understood Silver Linings Playbook
But I can tell this one ain’t shit
Singin’
Joy to this girl
Committee is all a twirl
Joy, to the voters of Academy
Joy, my nominee?♫
Rated PG-13, 124 Minutes
D: David O. Russell
W: David O. Russell
Genre: The suckage of self-owned business
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Feminists
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Shady corporate execs
♪ Parody inspired by “Joy to the World”
