Joy: O Nome do Sucesso

I confess an approach with a negative a priori. Having not really enjoyed Happiness Therapy (David O. Russell, 2012), I feared a film gathering the same director with the same main actors. And I was definitely wrong! First, Jennifer Lawrence plays admirably, and is excellently assisted by Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper, Edgar Ramirez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen and Isabella Rossellini. This film is also a fabulous and inspirational advocacy to an escape attempt from a disadvantaged environment filled with zombies (the mother Terry in particular, and the father Rudy to a lesser extent) thanks to an obstinacy skilfully measured out and the wise help of her former husband Tony. This movie is invigorating!

Blue-collar visionary Joy (Jennifer Lawrence) has an idea for a revolutionary new home-cleaning product. With the help of her failed lounge singer ex-husband Tony (Edgar Ramirez) and despite the machinations of her crazy family she pitches the product to a home shopping channel mogul (Bradley Cooper).

The film Joy is what you would get if ingested psychedelic mushrooms, wrote an infomercial about Miracle Mop and got an excellent cast of Hollywood stars to appear in it. Nothing is more absurd than the very idea of this movie getting made as a wide release feature with the exception of the inexplicable critical acclaim it has garnered.

Auteur David O.Russell (Who wrote, produced & directed) has been so successful in recent years with films like Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle that it has perhaps made him complacent and even bored. Sometimes when that happens an artist can go off on an experimental tangent. Equally as often the same artist can take on a challenge that they shouldn't. That is what Russell did here in trying to turn an idea that wouldn't normally have been considered for a movie of the week on the Lifetime network and making a feature film out of it.

I feel like seeing it again just to make sure the actors were really saying the goofy lines of dialogue I heard. Some of them appear to be gleaned from a motivational speaker's teleprompter. Others sound like what you hear in a dubbed version of an awful Mexican soap opera. I'm embarrassed for the distinguished cast that they had to try to make sense of this weirdness.

Tinged with Fellini-esque surrealism the bizarre rhythm of sequence suggests it was absolutely butchered during editing by somebody on speed, then Ritalin, then speed again. I often found it incoherent. It probably made perfect sense to drug users.

If the film accomplishes one thing it is that everyone who sees it is gonna wanna buy a Miracle Mop. I started scouting for one online right after I saw it.

I should not have been surprised. Jennifer Lawrence is an AMAZING actor, one of the finest we have today. The story is not flashy, but the acting is superb. If you can enjoy movies without a lot of CGI and things blowing up, give this a try.

Joy is a fine half a film. The performances all-around are strong, the story is uncommon enough to grab your attention, and keep you invested, and the direction is solid. With all that in mind, Joy still feels like a shallow version of what could have been. There is a reason why all the movie's Oscar buzz has all but dissipated in every category except a courtesy nod to Jennifer Lawrence as Best Actress; Why? You should read on.

Lawrence plays the titular character, a mother of two with a very complicated home life. Though divorced, her ex-husband (Ramirez) lives in the basement waiting for his singing career to take off. Though she has decidedly negative relationships with her parents, her shut-in mother (Madsen) lives with her and her father (De Niro) is a serial divorcée with a struggling auto repair shop. It's also the 1980's and she works the night shift for an Airline that's dramatically cutting back hours; yikes. The only thing she has going for her is she likes to tinker and has the work ethic to see a good idea through. So when she has a eureka moment after a failed excursion on her father's new girlfriend's boat, she quickly invents a household object that may just be her ticket out of systemic poverty.

I don't think I'm giving much away by saying the movie asks its audience to hinge their emotional cache on a mop. The self-wringing Miracle Mop to be exact, invented by honest-to-God real person Joy Mangano. Leave it to director David O. Russell to find a decent story in the life of a QVC luminary and keep it just this side of rational. The prologue of the film lovingly dedicates the movie to "daring women," which Joy certainly is but Russell wisely omits the last name to give the audience a universality. This too can be your story of success if you have grit and a good idea. It's a great theme sadly worth a much better movie.

Part of the problem is the pace. There are long stretches of improvisations that carry absolutely no emotional weight. Unlike American Hustle (2013) and Silver Linings Playbook (2012) where the rushed, overlapping dialogue and melodramatic mugging serves to highlight the immediacy of, say dealing with the mob, here there's nothing holding us to the characters and their goals...except Joy. Russell seems to be aware of his own style and juxtaposes the lives on screen with an 80's era soap opera which consumes the life of Joy's mother. The parallel is interesting in theory but the results deflate the proceedings.

Not usually the voice of hope, I really wanted to like this movie. A movie about the positives of hard work and entrepreneurship has not hit theaters since Pursuit of Happyiness (2006). Yet out of all modern directors working today, David O. Russell feels like a quixotic mouthpiece for such a hopeful theme. His movies always have an unabashed pessimism about human nature that undermines his characters with an almost Bunuelian sense of treachery. Even as far back as his Three Kings (1999) days there was a mercurial, bittersweet undercurrent to his work. Joy bares disappointment after disappointment to a breaking point most protagonists of this genre would buckle under. Then, as if to put a band-aid on an open gash, the movie ends with an epilogue that's pat to the point of flimflam.

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I heard that this movie received negative reviews and feedback, so I was pleasantly surprised when I enJOYed the movie as much as I did.

There is no denying that the grand appeal to the movie was Jennifer Lawrence's compelling performance. The movie's story itself does not seem like it has much to offer. A poor, overworked woman selling a plastic mop does not sound that thrilling on paper. However, Lawrence takes it up a level to a powerful story about a woman never giving up and making her own opportunities happen against all odds. She takes you on an emotional journey from start to finish. Lawrence has the undeniable ability to make you ache along with her struggles. This can be uncomfortable for the helpless movie-goer, which leads me to wonder if this is the reason so many people had distaste for the film. No one wants to be told that hard work and strong will are not enough to succeed in this world, and, as a whole, "Joy" does just that.

That being said, "Joy" still left me feeling inspired. As a young, aspiration-filled woman myself, Lawrence's portrayal of Joy makes me feel like I can take on the world (which is dream that current American society consistently crushes on the daily). Lawrence's deadpan stares as she struts in and out of offices along with her turning point bathroom haircut, confirm that both Jennifer and Joy are a force to be reckoned with.

"Joy" also possesses a subtle humor, although many reviews seem to deny its existence. The purposefully over the top soap opera scenes obsessed over by bed-bound Terry (played by Virginia Madsen) are just enough to raise the otherwise dark tone.

Lawrence and David O. Russell take you on an emotional journey with "Joy." It may not be the uplifting movie you want this holiday season, but I would argue it is the movie you need.