Great Business Flick: Joy

Rating: 7/10 (7 December 2018)

If you liked Wall Street, and There Will Be Blood, you will probably like this film as well. Jennifer Lawrence's characterization is compelling; however, her family is not. Her best friend is dependable, but not really anyone else in her family except her daughter. Her father, Robert De Niro, is in a role similar to the one he played in Being Flynn, a dysfunctional father seeking a place to stay with an offspring. He is not as good in this film as he was in Being Flynn. The rest of the cast is fine, but it is really not the family scenes that drive this movie; it is the business sequences. The film is like a stock market chart that starts rising gradually, and then suddenly spikes wildly up and down and then back up again. All of these spikes are caused by business-related episodes, some of which are absolutely stunning, and well done by the director. The film bogs down in the family scenes, and spikes in the business scenes. Clearly, the story yearns to be more of a business film than a dysfunctional family film. Luckily, the writer came to this same conclusion and we get a substantial number of good business scenes. Several of the family characterizations are minimal, at best, and are not as deeply explored as Joy. But this is probably a good thing, as the rest of the family is just not as interesting as Joy. A good film to be enjoyed more for its business revelations than insights on how to deal with a dysfunctional family.