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While this was only released late last year (year just gone by) I only saw it on the 3rd Jan 2016 and thought that with such talent behind it as David O' Russell, Jennifer Lawrence and one of my top three actors of all time; Robert De Niro, that this film would forshadow good portents about the year ahead for filmaking. Though considering that Russell, Lawrence and Bradley Cooper all worked together on the (in my opinion) criminally overrated American Hustle (2013) I should have seen the signs of this film being immensley overhyped coming a mile away.
So yeah, unlike the seemingly endless voices praising this film for its direction and storytelling, positing that it'll win an oscar (although winning one for best leading actress for Lawrence would be more than deserved in this case), I don't like Joy and personally think that it bungles what could have been a truly fascinating film about the buisness trials and tribulations of one of the most fascinating and enduring buisnesswomen in American invention history.
If you don't know the story behind the subject of this film; Lawrence plays the iconic Italian-American buisnesswoman and inventor Joy Mangano who invented the ease-wringing 'miracle-mop' and ended up creating one of the most outstanding buisness empries from the mind of a buisnesswoman in America at that point. Aside from the miracle mop, she made and oversaw many domestic and cleaning products that became iconic to the easing of housework in the late 20th century particualrly after some difficult patenting and legal troubles with her most early products like the miracle mop. Not only helping to provide a strong base for her then struggling and working-class family and becoming an icon for American buissnesswomen, she helped stay at home parents by creating and overseeing a huge range of domestic products that influenced many later inventions of the same purpose. Add to this the factor of betrayal from within her own family and group of buisneess partners and Joy Mangano's story of success is a truly inspiring one particularly in the context of the American buisness scene and society.
So how do you have such great source material and actors to deal with and yet manage to create a slow, overly-sentimental, plodding, inconsistent and boring biographical piece? Well you could point to the problems that American Hustle had with its pacing and direction but we'll look at why that stuff is particularly bad in this case. First of all, I must point out that aside from American Hustle and Joy, David O' Russell is definetly a promising and talented filmaker and director marking himself for having modern style and gelling it to historical themes and set pieces in his films (most of the time at least). But in Joy, this seems to take the back seat to Russell telling a by-the-dots retelling of the most significant buisness venture and period in Ms Mangano's life. Instead of focusing on Mangano's later life in brining the miracle mop and the struggles around this while occassionally cutting to the exploration of how her family's hardships affect her as a person we get a straightforward narration of this period of her life while indicating that the only affect of the struggles her family faced around her was that she got stressed sometimes. this is arguably the biggest complaint I have with the film as we see that she had many interactions with all of her dysfunctional family members at critical points in their lives too but never really show how this affects her aside fr5om making her tired or stressed. We never see how the plight of her two childeren, the ignorance and laziness of her mother and ex-husband or the selfishness of her father and half-sister ever really impact the route in life that she took.
In part this is down to Russell seemingly taking a straightforward and boring path towards storytelling and direction in this case and another factor in this problem is that by doing so, Russell relegates the actors and characters he has at hand to talking about almost every issue that they have and only once or twice (and only for breif monments) do we ever see 'show don't tell' taking centre stage. This really tires me in films that are trying to tell a compelling and emotionally shifting story. However, whereas this was a minor problem in Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, it becomes a massive probelm in Joy that practically wrecks the narrative and doesn't leave enough time to explore the subplots about all the struggles that Joy's immediate family are facing and how this truly influenced her. There is something of an exception to this with Joy's ex-husband Tony (played charmingly by Edgar Ramirez), her daughter and Bradley Cooper's slick sales exec Neil Walker who aside from Joy are the only likeable characters in the entire movie.
In turn, this is the other main criticism that I have with the film in that only a few of the characters we focus on are likeable and while Joy and Neil Walker being two of them is a huge plus (as they are both played by talented actors and are two of the main characters), Tony and Joy's daughter are given the side-character treatment which makes them somewhat unimportant (not always thankfully). Everyone else aside from this small cadre is either fluff or about unlikeable as a Nazi, necrophillic puppy-kicker whose film library consists of direct-to-video comedy sequels. Even De Niro playing Joy's father is never even spoken too for being selfish as fuck and barely supporting his daughter in an emotional sense. There are many others who are easy to highlight for their completley unlikeable characters like Joy's Dad's girlfreind but if I spoke about them all, we'd be stuck here even longer.
Oh and if there is another main critique I must point out its the ending. Its easily one of the worst-paced endings to a film I have possibly ever seen. To shorten; IT FUCKING SUCKS.
So the direction is shite, the script isn't that good, the chracters are mostly shite and the main acting stars are wasted so is there anything good with this film? The acting would most likley be the main one really. There isn't allot about this film that I can say is significant or especially good but if there is one it has to be the acting particularly from the film's main three stars of Lawrence, De Niro and Cooper who all put in absolutley cracking peformances and while De Niro's character is an aforementioned twat, he is undeniably a charasmatic and defined character and a good foil in some scenes to Lawrence's Joy. On top of this, the sound design is great and like Ms Lawrence's peformance should at least get a nomination for an Oscar in my opinion.
In conclusion, Joy is a tradgedy of sorts in the art of filmaking in the sense that it could've been so much better. The acting and sound is great but aside from this I really can't think of anything outstandingly good in the film. The lighting and camera-work are generic and bland, the story is boring and poorly-told, very few of the characters are massivley well acted and the extended parts of the story are never explored to proper and full extent. The film is both too long to just focus on the central narrative of Joy's buisness venture and too short to properly explore any of the subplots at hand. I'd probably say that its worth seeing the highlights of the film and keeping up to date with the awards that it will undoubtedly accumulate but I really wouldn't suggest seeing the film in full until they release it out on home video/DVD. Even then, I'd say only if you really, really want to.
In any case, Star Wars Episode VII and Daddy's Home are both far more entertaining films and are still in cinemas as far as I'm aware so just go see either of those films. Have fun whatever you're watching and until we next meet, take care!
Cinematography/Camera-work: 5/10
Acting: 10/10
Story/plot/writing: 4/10
Action/set-pieces/key moments: 4/10
Direction, lighting and music: 3/10
Overall rating: 26/50
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