Joy

It's time for another throwback month! Two reviews of films that came out at least one year ago. (Yes, I have not had time to go to the cinema this month)

Joy is not a good film. In fact, for the vast majority of its running time Joy is a consistently bad film, a somewhat decent story ruined by a director who clearly has no idea how to tell it. Narrated by the titular character's Grandmother (a decision made after the film had been shot, and it really shows), Joy is very loosely based on the story of Joy Mangano, the woman who invented the Miracle Mop, and follows her as she comes up with the basic idea for the mop before creating a prototype and trying to sell it.

When I say that director David O. Russell has no idea how to tell this story, I mean it. From the films opening moments it is clear that he is out of his depth, a montage of sorts showing parts of Joy's life completely failing to make any kind of an impact thanks to the rushed way in which it is presented, sudden music cues and tonal shifts making it impossible to figure out what the film wants you to feel, never mind actually feel it. Even after that, the whole first act and much of the second is just a series of "and then..." scenes, events simply happening one after another rather than leading into each other, creating a film that fails to actually tell a coherent story for much of its running time. I'm not sure if it is fair to say that David O. Russell is a bad director (the consistent critical acclaim he has seen up until now is a fairly strong argument that he isn't), but his blatant inability to make a good film out of Joy should certainly be raising some eyebrows, especially given the elementary mistakes on display.

In many ways, Joy feels like the first draft of a script that was accidentally made into a feature-length movie. Littered with problems that should have been ironed out before filming started. Rather than trying to make the main character likeable, Joy instead aims to make everyone else so easy to hate that you end up rooting for Joy by default. Not helped by a lead actress that annoys every fibre of my being. I've said before that I've never been overly impressed with Jennifer Lawrence as an actress, the main reason being my inability to see her as anyone other than Jennifer Lawrence.

Too egotistical to play as a straight biopic but too bland and mindless to be anything else, Joy is ultimately little more than a gigantic misfire, a messy, badly directed film that wastes the few good scenes it contains.