Review of Joy (2015) by Warwick B — 17 Jan 2016

Based on a true story director David O'Russell again teams up with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, this time for a rags to riches biopic about Joy Mangano, the woman who invented the Miracle Mop back in the nineties and made a fortune selling it herself on the home shopping channel QVC.

The film tracks her life from struggling single working mother to business legend as she balances work and her supremely dysfunctional family - bed bound, soap opera obsessed mother; divorced father sharing the basement with the ex-husband and would be singer whose career has never came to anything; and sabotaging, jealous sister.

It's a moving and often funny roller-coaster ride about a woman who never gives up on her dreams despite all the changes in fortune that repeatedly see hopes raised and dashed in a bid to launch her own business.

Jennifer Lawrence stars as Joy, the strong woman who triumphs over adversity, with a rather low key Bradley Cooper as TV network executive, Neil Walker. Best of the supporting cast are Robert De Niro and Isabella Rossellini who together make for irresistible double act as Joy's womanising father and his rich Italian girlfriend. But this is Lawrence's film, she is so wondrously good, giving her best performance yet.