Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence stars as Joy, a struggling mother who’s ex husband and father live in her basement, her own mother resides in her room watching TV all day and the only person around her who seems to make any sense is her grandmother.
This is the third pairing of O’ Russell and Lawrence after Silver Linings Playbook for which she won her Oscar and American Hustle for which she was nominated.
David O’ Russell has been on a roll these past few years with The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle all being serious Oscar contenders, but his latest film falls short and whilst it’s still a fine film with a great lead performance and entertaining for the most part, a lot of it didn’t really work.
My main issue with the film are the characters. Other than Joy, I found myself not caring about any of the supporting characters, mainly because they’re all screw ups and not in the fun, charming kind of way. Her father played by Robert De Niro is funny, but he’s a destructive moron. Her mother is a hermit who lives her life through a soap opera on Television and her ex husband is honestly just quite annoying, he has too much faith in his singing career that he won’t go out and get a proper job to supply for his family. And Bradley Cooper plays the man who gives Joy her big break, he puts her on QVC to sell her Miracle Mop which becomes a much needed household item but he’s not in the film enough for me to gauge any amount of empathy for the character.
Let me re-iterate once again that Joy isn’t a bad film, it’s fine, it’s not what I’ve come to expect from David O’ Russell but every director has a bad day and hopefully Joy is this for the director.
Over all I can’t recommend rushing out to see it, so this is one you can probably skip.