Review of Joy (2015) by Amanda C — 04 May 2016

The problems with Joy start before the film begins with the casting of Jennifer Lawrence, once again, as a woman at least ten years her senior. Now nothing against Lawrence, she is a solid actress who can be fantastic in the right role, however, even aside from the fact that there many, many equally talented actresses in their thirties and forties out there who arw struggling to get work due to their age, Lawrence just doesn't have the right presence on screen to play older.

She comes across as a child playing dress up and is missing the weight of the years an older woman would have. Unfortunately, Lawrence is by far the best thing about Joy. The film is a sloppy mess from top to bottom, messing with the real Joy Mangano's life to make Joy into a woman with a good idea who got lucky as opposed to a trained businesswoman who worked her ass off to build her empire.

It's the little things that are so maddening. Mangano had an MBA, in the film, she didn't go to college in favour of helping her parents though their divorce. A manipulative rich girlfriend is invented for her father to teach movie Joy about business, who clearly knows nothing about being an entrpenur.

It discredits the work of Mangano and adds to the long list of films that celebrate women for doing very little and accomplishing things by simply being. This is all in a addition to being a film that struggles to find its tone, bouncing between dramatic and melodramatic, all while attempting to be light, frothy and funny.

The sum total is a mess of a film that only received the recognition it did due to the high profile cast and a director that everyone who matters seems determined to anoint as the next great.