Joy (Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, Edgar Ramirez) – Director David O. Russell reunited with his major stars from Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle to bring Joy to the world on Christmas Day. Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper comprise Russell’s troupe for this true-to-life story of a smart, underachieving, family-first woman seeking to get her invention to the market.
Jennifer Lawrence plays Joy magnificently (look for another Oscar nomination) showing her extraordinary range of emotion and energy. She plays her vulnerable, loyal, frustrated, angry, tough, defeated, victorious, humble, relentless, determined, sad and more. Not many actresses can do that. As I have said many times before, she is the real deal.
Joy was valedictorian of her class but she never went to college because of family business issues. She married, but that didn’t last long … except that her ex-husband (Edgar Martinez), a would-be singer, still lives in her basement. Her father (Robert De Niro) runs a failing business and fails at love, too. So he moves in with her. Her mentally challenged mother (Virginia Madsen) and loving grandmother (thrice Oscar nominated Diane Ladd) live with her already. Mom watches soap operas all day and rarely leaves her room. Grandma Mimi is the only person who always believed in Joy and plays an almost mystical role in her life. Honestly, there isn’t a lot of joy in Joy’s life.
As her bills pile up, she gets her dad’s new girlfriend (played by Isabella Rossellini) to invest in her mop, creating enough capital to allow her to manufacture and assemble it. No one is interested. She tries selling them in a K-Mart parking lot but no one wants to try it. But when her ex-husband connects with a former co-worker who went to work for the then-fledgling QVC television network, Joy successfully pitches the network’s CEO, Neil Walker (Bradley Cooper). And it fails. So she pushes him to let her on the air to sell it herself. That works initially but soon production and financial problems threaten to derail everything.
Joy is a bigger story than just a woman with an invention. It is a woman’s determined triumph over seemingly endless adversity. Joy doesn’t have to lose her family to be successful. She isn’t dependent on them either. She is the rock. But she is vulnerable, fallible, and scared.
The ensemble cast surrounds Lawrence like a warm blanket much as they did in Playbook and Hustle (though she had a more limited role there). They provide complexity to the family and to the story without getting in the way or stealing scenes.
This film is a Lawrence tour-de-force in a very different way than the Hunger Games films. We are seeing an actress of Meryl Streep-like proportions grow up before our eyes. Don’t miss Joy.
(Spoiler Alert: There really is a Joy – Joy Mangano – the inventor of the “Miracle Mop,” whose invention led to the building of a vast retail empire.)