Joy (2015)

Directed by David O. Russell. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Édgar Ramírez, Isabella Rossellini, Virginia Madsen, Dascha Polanco, Elisabeth Röhm, Diane Ladd, Aundrea & Gia Gadsby, Ken Cheeseman, Jimmy Jean-Louis. [PG-13]

Partly-true story of scrappy entrepreneur Joy Mangano (Lawrence), who tried turning her self-wringing Miracle Mop invention into a lucrative business venture. The first act is as erratic and kitschy as anything that writer/director Russell has yet attempted (no small feat), but once the mop idea starts snowballing, the film settles into a more conventional underdog scenario as Joy faces one setback/hurtle after another trying to become a success. The uncertainty and mannered quirkiness of those early passages were unsustainable, but in spite of the flawed approach, at least they were more audacious than the scenes of Joy navigating the world of televised home shopping, exploitive manufacturing, patent law, etc. Can’t live up to the promise of reuniting the three central actors and filmmaker behind Silver Linings Playbook, but the scenes of Joy dealing with the opinionated eccentrics in her family (blood-related and otherwise) will ring familiar to fans of Russell’s earlier work (not just Playbook, but also The Fighter, Flirting with Disaster, and so on). Absorbing enough to stick with it, but the emotional triumphs and defeats are muted, the tonal shifts are frustrating, and its heroine comes off as unreadably empty, more a result of the writing than Lawrence’s performance. Russell shares story credit with co-executive producer Annie Mumolo; Mangano herself is also listed among those producers.

55/100