Joy

 

Last Sunday night, Jennifer Lawrence won a Golden Globe for her performance in David O. Russell’s film Joy. In the film, Lawrence plays the title character, an overburdened nearly 40 year old divorced mother of two. She busily takes care of her children, her shut-in mother, her lounge singer ex-husband who lives in her basement, and her newly divorced father who also moves into her basement. Being swamped with a decaying house and unpaid bills, Joy never gets a chance to do anything for herself. Specifically, she never gets to develop any of the ideas she has for inventions. 

The film shows us that, as a young girl, Joy was full of ideas and ambition, but somewhere along the way, all of that got put on hold, so she lives her life harried, underwater, and unfulfilled.

When her father begins dating a wealthy woman with business experience, Joy simultaneously gets an idea and finds that she a potential investor. After red wine gets spilled on the expensive deck of the girlfriend’s sailboat and Joy has to mop up the broken glass and mess, she decides she wants to develop a self-wringing mop. The story of the movie is essentially how she designs and manufactures the Miracle Mop while running into money troubles, indifference, fraud, and betrayal at every step of the way. She eventually gets on QVC and sells tens of thousands of her mops but her troubles don’t end there. Her triumphant performance on live tv selling her product is not the climax you think it is and the movie goes on for another thirty or forty minutes after that happens. I hope it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that things turn out alright in the end and Joy is victorious.

Of course, the film isn’t just about a mop or selling stuff on TV. It’s about being who you really are and not letting the heaviness of everyday life weigh you down to the point that you stop pursuing what really matters to you. It is, without question, the most entertaining, well made movie about a QVC product you will ever see.

Jennifer Lawrence was rightly recognized at the Golden Globes because at 25 she manages to believably convey the discouragement, feistiness, devotion, and conflict of a weary but hopeful 40 year old woman. She’s a very organic performer and even though she never really looks old enough to play her character, you buy it.

While Lawrence’s performance is truly wonderful, the film itself is far from perfect. It was directed by David O. Russell, who began his career with prickly, provocative, sometimes experimental films but has transformed himself into a mainstream, feel-good storyteller. His films used to make you squirm but now he just wants to make you cheer. Joy is in the same vein as The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook. It features the same loving but flawed and unsupportive family characters, the same blue collar setting, the same triumphant underdog story. Of course, lots of directors explore the same territory over and over again. Scorcese, Spielberg, Tarantino, and plenty of others make the same film over and over again. The question is, how well do they do it.

In the case of Joy, there are problems with the script. There are dangling loose ends, completely unused characters, and too-convenient coincidences throughout. You could blame these problems on the fact that Joy is supposedly based on a true story, but it’s so very loosely adapted from the actual true story, there’s no reason for there to be  plot holes or random characters. Russell had no interest in a literal biopic, so he can’t blame the film’s blank spots on the biography. 

Still, even with the nagging questions of the script, Lawrence's award winning performance is enough. It's real and powerful enough to carry the entire film. I left the theater knowing Joy was a flawed, underdeveloped movie, but not caring about those flaws and loving it anyway.


This review originally appeared on Q90.1. For more information, go to www.deltabroadcasting.org.