David O. Russell drank the cool-aid.
After his renaissance began with The Fighter in 2010, Russell created his own niche in writing/directing interesting films filled with quirky characters.
The characters at times got weird (see: Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle and Chris Tucker in Silver Linings Playbook), but they seemed useful in films that were fascinating snapshots of American life.
Joy is no such snapshot.
It is not fascinating and the weird characters seem to be there so somebody other than Lawrence speaks.
Joy feels long, poorly paced and mostly just boring.
Based around the titular character who is apparently destined for greatness because she created a really basic paper farm and a dog leash, Joy is the story of a woman who invents a mop despite her pathetic and infuriating family.
And that is about it.
Joy has to break out of her crippling and clingy family, go on TV so people buy her mop, meet Bradley Cooper and pull off a Grease-style transformation.
To get to all of that, Russell forces the audience to sit through a half hour introduction that really should have been cut in half.
Joy’s grandmother Mimi – played with a good loving reverence by Diane Ladd – preaches endlessly about the importance of letting creativity fly and nourishing gifts.
It’s a nice message, but it gets shoved down the throat as Mimi fights off everyone of Joy’s dysfunctional family.
And it is that family that is the real problem with this film.
It’s not that the performances are bad, Ladd, Robert De Niro, as Joy’s father Rudy and Édgar Ramírez as her basement dwelling ex-husband Tony all are excellent in their roles. What is bad is their characters.
Joy aside, every character in this film is a one dimensional shade.
There’s the anti-Joy group: Rudy, his girlfriend Trudy (Isabella Rossellini in a truly awful performance), Joy’s mother Terry (Virginia Madsen) and her half-sister Peggy (Elisabeth Röhm). A set of jealous or just stupid family members who want part of Joy’s apparent empire, despite there being no empire and them being so obvious with their motives.
The pro-Joy group of Mimi, Tony and Joy’s best friend Jackie (Dascha Polanco) are actually useful in terms of helping Joy but spend the rest of the 124 minutes standing in shadows with sad looks.
Tony and Jackie’s continued presence around Joy need further explanation other than one narrated line of they were better friends than as husband and wife and we’ve been best friends since grade school.
Bradley Cooper enters the film at about the half-way point, as Neil Walker, a producer in the fledgling industry of infomercials and is clearly the second most interesting character of the film.
Caught between his motivation as a producer to move product and his obvious affection for Joy, the best scenes in the film involve Neil and his studio.
While she is excellent throughout the film, particularly when she grits her teeth and moves into business mode, Lawrence is outstanding on the stage selling to the screen.
As Bradley Cooper does Bradley Cooper things behind the camera, Russell settles into the film and allows things to move along at a pace that is never matched throughout the rest of the film.
The time shift at the end of the film is an annoying payoff after that slow start, yet this film really is all for Lawrence.
She carries it well, even if she can’t bring anybody to her level as they remain weighed down by their uninteresting personalities.
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Direction/cinematography
Possibly as a result of the dull screenplay, Russell gets more interesting with his direction than in previous work.
He uses silhouettes consistently (perhaps a homage to OPS) and tries to keep things visually entertaining.
The film only really has a handful of settings, so Russell has to keep things interesting, and the cinematography of Linus Sandgren makes good use of some angles.
The lighting is consistently dark and that aids to the contrast of the bright lights on stage when Joy is in front of the camera and the sunshine of her victorious scene.
1.5/2
Screenplay
While Annie Mumolo gets a story credit, the screenplay is all on Russell and it is clearly the weakest part of the film.
While his previous film – American Hustle – had plenty of flaws, the highlight was the management of a range of characters who seemed to have their own story to tell.
Russell’s ability to deliver character driven dramedy didn’t come together here.
The dialogue isn’t anywhere near as snappy as usual, the narration is unnecessary, and the pacing is all wrong.
Lawrence get’s a couple of good lines. Rudy and Terry are humorous at times. But that is about it.
0.2/2
Acting
This film is definitely a showcase for Lawrence and she nails it.
She shifts gears from anxious and worn down, to excited and determined smoothly and while her final You Are The One I Want scene isn’t very inspiring, she really delivers.
De Niro and Cooper both dilligently perform up to expectations, but Rossellini is dour.
1.5/2
Rewatchability
If you skipped down to this section I have some news: this film is barely semi-entertaining.
If Joy comes on on FOXTEL, it’s being skipped over.
0/2
Zeitgeist
Unless Jennifer Lawrence pulls out a couple of awards, Joy is soon to be forgotten I’m afraid.
It’s not going to come to mind when thinking about Russell, De Niro or Cooper. So unless Lawrence pulls something out – as of the time of writing she has a Golden Globe nomination and should earn an Oscar nom – it’s not going to come to mind quickly when thinking about her either.
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