Joy (2015), PG-13, ★★

Jennifer Lawrence as Joy Mangano. 

It's another rags-to-riches story that sets an underdog in a corporate business that tries to make a name for herself. I've seen many of those movies in recent years raging from crazy to inspiring. Crazy is the exact definition for The Wolf of Wall Street and Scarface. But, anyway, try being a person who has to take care of two children and parents and other relatives in a small household. I mean, it's a lot of work for one person and also to have financial struggles under your belt. It's a modern Cinderella take in the corporate world and that premise is refreshing, however, the movie is too full of events and moments of making promises and supplying disappointments that you get cranky after a while. Plus, the inconsistent balance between direction and script-writing from David O. Russell is quite noticeable.

Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence) is a Long Island-based entrepreneur in the 1990s whose Miracle Mop was being sold in multiple and massive units. But, we got to go back to the beginning and set it up. She is from a dysfunctional family. Her mother, Terry (Virginia Madsen), watches soap operas all day while in her bed (nice cameos from a few soap opera stars, though.) Her ex-husband, Terry (Robert De Niro), acts like a whiny child when he is single and becomes more powerful when he goes out with another woman. His sister, Peggy (Elizabeth Rohm), lives in a basement with her husband until his singing career takes off.

The problem is that everyone is dragging her down to negativity and very few people are positive towards her: Mimi, her grandmother (Diane Ladd, who also provides voiceover narration), and her ex-husband, Tony (Edgar Ramirez). Later, Joy draws a prototype of a product that will satisfy all their cleaning needs and to satisfy potential customers. She draws a mop and creates the mop with some help. With some initial hesitation from her production company and financial struggles, Joy's product takes off in some local places. But, her products are taken away because of solicitation.

She has reached a new low with her product because of bills piling up and no plans of selling her product. Tony tells Joy that he has an idea. They drive up to a corporate building which is a facility at QVC (Quality, Value, Convenience) in which they meet a big shot, an executive from QVC named Neil Walker (Bradley Cooper), who is not convinced by her product at her first but when Joy demonstrates on how it works, Neil is convinced if she can get 50,000 units sold by next week and she says, "I think so."

Isabella Rosellini and Robert De Niro looking at Lawrence.

This movie is a big mess both in structure and storytelling and it's going to take a lot of Joy Mangano's mops to clean up this mess. David O. Russell, the director of The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, is in love with how the style is looking with the production design, costume design and setting and they are all quite nice but he forgets how story construction and tone works. The tone bothered me a bit because he never quite clearly understands what kind of genre it is: a true story, an underdog story, a dysfunctional family comedy, a drama in the corporate world, a sort of holiday fare with a good unmarried couple? It is all over the place.

Jennifer Lawrence is the standout of the movie as she personifies a strong and determined woman to face a challenge to make herself and her family better. However, I did not buy her as a woman who invents a product and is a mother with two children. She is too young for the role. But, she and Bradley Cooper, in a small role, have some nice chemistry but the better chemistry is with Edgar Ramirez. And, if it were narrowed down to both Lawrence and Ramirez with the children who are having marriage problems and she invents the product, then the movie's tone and result would be quite efficient. Robert De Niro (I'm sorry, he is one of my favorite actors of all-time) is miscast as the annoyingly uptight father. He does not work well with the story but has some nice fun with Rosellini.

Structurally, it was disorganized in the beginning, but then it got interesting when we get to QVC and we see how it operates behind-the-scenes and we see Joy in front of the camera. Then, it goes downhill to some self-parody and a rushed climax. I was disappointed by the movie, overall, because of the lack of creative storytelling and direction from Russell. He is a supremely talented filmmaker and as far as I'm concerned, this is his first mis-step as a director. An interesting female character in a long list of strong female characters this year but not much clarity and organization to back her and her story up.

**