3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.31.15
Few stories are more engaging
than rags-to-riches empowerment sagas.
Particularly when they’re
(somewhat) true.
 |
| Joy (Jennifer Lawrence, center) is astonished, and angered, when she discovers the degree to which her half-sister Peggy (Elisabeth Röhn) has betrayed her ... a transgression that their father, Rudy (Robert De Niro), blandly tolerates. |
Writer/director David O.
Russell’s third collaboration with star Jennifer Lawrence is based loosely on
the astonishing life of American inventor/entrepreneur Joy Mangano, whose
career arc is just about the best modern Horatio Alger story one could imagine.
Unfortunately, Russell has mucked
it up a bit, by surrounding his leading lady with a motley crew of supporting
characters, some of them just-plain-weird burlesques who belong in an entirely
different film.
As was the case with Russell’s American Hustle — which sorta/kinda depicted what went down during the FBI’s
late 1970s/early ’80s Abscam sting — the telling here is more “interpretive”
than literal fact. Thanks to this wealth of oddly eccentric characters, at
times the heightened tone feels like the off-kilter universe we’d expect in a
Coen brothers movie (particularly Fargo).
But the key elements in Russell
and co-plotter Annie Mumolo’s story are authentic, and the film is fueled by
another powerhouse performance from Lawrence. If Joy ultimately lacks the
exhilarating pizzazz of American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook, it’s
not for lack of effort on her part. It’s more a case of the various thematic
elements not coalescing quite as successfully, and some of the characters being
too off-balance.
I’m also not happy with the
clumsy narrative device. The story is introduced and occasionally punctuated by
off-camera commentary from our heroine’s grandmother Mimi (Diane Ladd),
speaking from a not-too-distant remove. Although her remarks smooth a few of
the flashback transitions, for the most part this gimmick is superfluous, even
bothersome.
A brief prologue introduces Joy
as a little girl (played here by Isabella Crovetti-Cramp), with imaginative
sparkle; she’s the sort of kid who builds her own little worlds with scissors,
tape and construction paper.
It’s likely part defense
mechanism, as the home environment is tempestuous. Her father, Rudy (Robert De
Niro), flits from one woman to the next; he also has anger-management issues,
although his occasional rages never are directed at Joy or her half-sister
Peggy (Madison Wolfe).
