Review of Joy (2015) by Filmphonic — 05 Jan 2016

Jennifer Lawrence is reunited with director David O. Russell in a semi-biographical comedy/drama based on Joy Mangano and her journey from struggling New York single mom to entrepreneur, inventor, millionaire business owner and powerful family matriarch.

Writer/director David O. Russell’s formula of stylizing real stories, featuring ensemble casts portraying humorously dysfunctional characters, against the backdrop of classic rock & pop soundtracks has served him well in recent years with films like ‘American Hustle’ and ‘The Fighter’. And by uniting Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper for the third time, O. Russell seeks to work his magic on this female empowerment and “American Dream” story.

Despite many a seemingly mundane subject resulting in many an entertaining movie, you might think that a semi-biographical story about a rather typical middle-America single mom, who transforms into a rich shopping channel star, just wouldn’t be that compelling… and you would be right.

Hollywood megastar and media darling Jennifer Lawrence stars as “Joy”, the only seemingly functional character in the story, who’s surrounded by quirky friends & family that rely on her while life and responsibility drags her down. Only for circumstance to conspire with her precocious nature to help her fulfil her potential in this true, and yet rather fanciful tale about never giving up in the pursuit of your “American Dream”.

‘Joy’ certainly does have its redeeming qualities with plenty of offbeat characters and deadpan humour to keep you entertained, for the first half at least. Robert De Niro’s turn as Joy’s self-styled father particularly steals the show, and Jennifer Lawrence central accomplished performance just about holds the movie together. But the tone of the film changes drastically towards the third act and the comedic charm is lost as it moves towards a rather flat emotional character drama.

No amount of toe-tappin’ tunes will disguise the fact that this film is very uneven with most of the narrative focusing on Joy’s early entrepreneurial days, which then suddenly and conveniently wraps up in the final 10 minutes, with no lead-in, into her current status as a powerful family matriarch, and then that’s it, the film’s over.

The Bottom Line….

Director David O. Russell can’t seem to wrangle a strong ensemble cast, a delightful soundtrack and plenty of belly laughs into a compelling and cohesive rags-to-riches “American Dream” story. ‘Joy’ is a rather flat and underwhelming comedy/drama that loses steam, let’s see if O. Russell will now rework his winning formula or apply it to more yielding material.