Joy To The World- With Jennifer Lawrence’s Joy In Mind

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Joy, starring Jennifer Lopez, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper, 2015

 

On the face of it one would think that a film going through the trials and tribulations of a driven house-wife, working mother and gimme shelter provider to all the flotsam and jetsam that came through her door would not really cut it. But factor in a driven to succeed at getting out from under a pile of debt going nowhere fast but with a few ideas in her head mother and housewife and maybe you would be on to something that people might want to spend two hours watching. Well you have come to the right place if you are thinking about the film under review Joy staring the ubiquitous Jennifer Lawrence.      

Let’s start from the beginning on this one-start in childhood to figure out that this Joy certainly lived in her own world. A fantasy world as a kid but a rather hard-nosed young woman after giving up college and whatever that might have meant to deal with her cuckoo parents, her jealous half-sister, a go for broke husband turned ex-husband and a couple kids, nice kids but an added demand on her energies. A woman facing an average suburban life, a lower middle class maybe even these days working class life complete with bills, leaky faucets, and demanding children (and don’t forget to add to the baggage train a love-addled father, a television-addled mother and a generally-addled ex-husband all living one way or the other under her roof, her heavily mortgaged roof.).     

But put together spunk, smarts and chutzpah too and that will make Joy different from the run of the mill suburban housewife-working mother that populate the silver screen and television land. Make her another of the strong modern woman that have come to dominate the silver screen of late when you get away from purely romantic films and into slice of life pics. Joy’s salvation. A mop. What? Yes a mop and not just any mop my friend but a mop which can clean whole floors without going to the bucket, a mop which can get into hard to reach corners, a mop that practically wrings itself, a mop that you only have to buy one of in your entire life, a mop which will take your household blues away and, well, just and. The selling of that mop idea to marketers in the new age of purchasing materials by credit card via television commercials on stations dedicated to such purchases (and now on-line as well) is what drives this film. The rags to riches story grown hoary in America if you can just make the right connections. No, actually I am wrong what drives this film is a young woman up against it but who with grit and savvy succeeds and who just happens to have self-rinsing mops to sell. A quirky film that is a little soft on story-line and off-hand goofy in places but strong on its Joy/Jennifer Lawrence performances. Watch it.