REVIEW: JOY
It's hard to believe Jennifer Lawrence hasn't been in more movies, isn't it? Or rather, that she hasn't been around longer than she already has. Two massive franchises, an Oscar and...The Beaver? Did anyone see this movie about Mel Gibson and the beaver puppet? It was actually kinda cute. Anyway, IMDb lists Lawrence as being in 15 movies since she broke out in Winter's Bone. She's the it girl of Hollywood now and she was born in the 90's. What am I doing with my life? But this movie is important for one reason. The Hunger Games and X-Men were both series, franchises with fans (one of the book series, the other the previous films) built in. Silver Linings Playbook was her and Bradley Cooper's movie. She had a supporting role in American Hustle. Joy can be considered the first original movie that Lawrence has carried...pretty squarely on her shoulders, much like her titular character in this film. So is she effective?
My initial response is yes. I like this movie less the more I think about it, and the squandered potential her frequent collaborator David O. Russell put on the screen. But I'm happy to say the fault of this doesn't rest on Lawrence, who time after time has proven to us that she is the actress to be reckoned with. The fact that the rest of the movie just isn't as compelling is her is a little telling though. Her harried, desperate mother of two, with a tumultuous father coming to stay (it's Bobby De Niro!), an ex-husband living in her basement and a practically vegetable mother who's addicted to soaps, was still...well, enjoyable to watch. The movie's essentially not really about the life of Home Shopping Network staple Joy Mangano (I'll admit I have her hangers in my closet at home) but about Lawrence's Joy trying to sell her Miracle Mop to the masses.
Here's my first problem: why won't you just call her Joy Mangano? When she gets on TV, the character says her name is just "Joy." If you're going to have (minor cameo spoiler ahead) someone play real Joan Rivers and have Bradley Cooper play an executive at the real QVC shopping network, why can't you call her Joy Mangano!? Joy Mangano was an executive producer on this. That doesn't mean much really: Stan Lee is an executive producer on Marvel movies and he has zero control over any of the content. Speaking of cameos: Bradley Cooper. Russell, who directed Cooper to not one but two Academy Award recognized performances has failed his muse. The manic electricity is gone from Bradley's eyes. Russell just wanted his name on the poster so he and J-Law could "reunite" for another movie. Cooper's not bad in it at all, it's just that his role could've been played by anyone.
And then there's the problem of likability: why should I care about any of these characters? De Niro's Rudy is borderline abusive, Joy's mother (Virginia Madsen) is much too whiny for us to sympathize with her television addiction, and the sister. Ugggh. I've never seen Elisabeth Röhm in anything else, but I want to rent one of her movies so I can get the taste of her character (Joy's half-sister) out of my mouth. There isn't a single redeemable thing she says in the whole film, and I kind of hated her guts halfway through. In fact the most likable characters are Joy's ex-husband, who's still a mooch because he's living in her basement, and her kids, because they don't say much throughout the movie. But let's play devil's advocate here: perhaps it was Russell's intentions to make everyone so vile that all your support was shifted to Joy [INSERT LAST NAME HERE]. I suppose that's kind of how he got you to root for Mark Wahlberg's Micky Ward: surrounding him with a dysfunctional family so you're cheering for him in the ring. The difference here is that those characters are redeemed later on. This ensemble is not. They support Joy in her endeavors, but they're still rotten.
This movie isn't bad however. There was still a lot of effort put into this that is visible, like Lawrence and Cooper's back in forth when she freezes on TV for the first time. It's pretty adorable. The recurring device of the mother's soap opera characters is an inventive one, but it feels a little half-baked. But after it seems like Joy is finally able to get her life together, the movie shuffles its ending aside, giving us the bulleted PowerPoint accomplishments of the real life Mangano. The move still functions as a great vehicle for Lawrence (not sure if it justifies her $15 million paycheck though), but for a movie called Joy it sure does suffer from a lot of melancholy at times.
Rating: 2/4 stars
My initial response is yes. I like this movie less the more I think about it, and the squandered potential her frequent collaborator David O. Russell put on the screen. But I'm happy to say the fault of this doesn't rest on Lawrence, who time after time has proven to us that she is the actress to be reckoned with. The fact that the rest of the movie just isn't as compelling is her is a little telling though. Her harried, desperate mother of two, with a tumultuous father coming to stay (it's Bobby De Niro!), an ex-husband living in her basement and a practically vegetable mother who's addicted to soaps, was still...well, enjoyable to watch. The movie's essentially not really about the life of Home Shopping Network staple Joy Mangano (I'll admit I have her hangers in my closet at home) but about Lawrence's Joy trying to sell her Miracle Mop to the masses.
Here's my first problem: why won't you just call her Joy Mangano? When she gets on TV, the character says her name is just "Joy." If you're going to have (minor cameo spoiler ahead) someone play real Joan Rivers and have Bradley Cooper play an executive at the real QVC shopping network, why can't you call her Joy Mangano!? Joy Mangano was an executive producer on this. That doesn't mean much really: Stan Lee is an executive producer on Marvel movies and he has zero control over any of the content. Speaking of cameos: Bradley Cooper. Russell, who directed Cooper to not one but two Academy Award recognized performances has failed his muse. The manic electricity is gone from Bradley's eyes. Russell just wanted his name on the poster so he and J-Law could "reunite" for another movie. Cooper's not bad in it at all, it's just that his role could've been played by anyone.And then there's the problem of likability: why should I care about any of these characters? De Niro's Rudy is borderline abusive, Joy's mother (Virginia Madsen) is much too whiny for us to sympathize with her television addiction, and the sister. Ugggh. I've never seen Elisabeth Röhm in anything else, but I want to rent one of her movies so I can get the taste of her character (Joy's half-sister) out of my mouth. There isn't a single redeemable thing she says in the whole film, and I kind of hated her guts halfway through. In fact the most likable characters are Joy's ex-husband, who's still a mooch because he's living in her basement, and her kids, because they don't say much throughout the movie. But let's play devil's advocate here: perhaps it was Russell's intentions to make everyone so vile that all your support was shifted to Joy [INSERT LAST NAME HERE]. I suppose that's kind of how he got you to root for Mark Wahlberg's Micky Ward: surrounding him with a dysfunctional family so you're cheering for him in the ring. The difference here is that those characters are redeemed later on. This ensemble is not. They support Joy in her endeavors, but they're still rotten.
This movie isn't bad however. There was still a lot of effort put into this that is visible, like Lawrence and Cooper's back in forth when she freezes on TV for the first time. It's pretty adorable. The recurring device of the mother's soap opera characters is an inventive one, but it feels a little half-baked. But after it seems like Joy is finally able to get her life together, the movie shuffles its ending aside, giving us the bulleted PowerPoint accomplishments of the real life Mangano. The move still functions as a great vehicle for Lawrence (not sure if it justifies her $15 million paycheck though), but for a movie called Joy it sure does suffer from a lot of melancholy at times.
Rating: 2/4 stars
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