Bottom Line: Great Jennifer in a Pit of a picture

Rating: 1/10 (5 February 2016)

JENNIFER SHINES IN "JOY"-- "JOY" Starring Jennifer Lawrence and misdirected by David O. Russell.
Jennifer Lawrence shines in one of the dullest pictures of the year, another pretentious all-star miscarriage by D. O.Russell. The poster indicates that the co-star is Bradley Cooper, but he doesn't even show up until the halfway Mark, and then he doesn't even get the girl. De Niro is in it, but in such a wooden walk through that he might as well not be in it. There is also a side role by Isabella Rosselini that looks like it came from another picture -- a horror flick. Basically this is the story of a sickeningly dysfunctional family and Lawrence's real co-star is a broom! ~ ~ talk about shaggy dog -- this is about as shaggy as it gets.
I felt like it was going to be a walkout at the ten minute mark, but I forced myself to sit through a senseless fifteen minute introduction featuring a child actress playing the Joy of the title, just to see what Lawrence would finally look like as an urban housewife. To my great relief even in this disheveled role she looked just as great and was just as attractive as she has been as Katnip Everdeen in The Hunger Games. This 25 year old actress has it all -- she can do no wrong, even in a turkey of a film like this. Fresh young beauty, brash engaging personalty-plus, plus a sexy low pitched voice reminiscent of early Lauren Bacall -- Bacall, in fact, was even younger when she became an overnight star inviting Bogart to whistle, and Lawrence seems to be following a similar trajectory -- so enticing she can turn jaded critics into fans. For the record O'Russell's latest study in nothingness is about a young woman who was a born Edison -- inventing a patented new dog collar at something like age ten, then -- to escape the drudgery of her dreadful dysfunctional family, including her divorced husband who hasn't left the fold and dreams of becoming the next Pressley even though he has a thick Spanish accent -- a homeless father (De Niro) who operates a failing business out of The garage -- divorced from her vapid mother (Diane Lane) who spends all day in bed watching TV soap operas -- to get away from all that, Joy now a mature inventress, designs an ingenious (?) recyclable Mop head -- on a mop that sells for a hefty $19.95, but will last a lifetime. Get it? (I didn't)
Pretty dull going until we meet Bradley Cooper about halfway through the film. There the story picks up a little because of the natural chemistry between Brad and Jennifer. But even this chemistry is wasted as Brad is a career advertising executive who is more interested in Marketing the broom on TV than on bedding Jennifer down. When the broom, with Jennifer/Joy herself pushing it on TV, becomes a best seller, the corrupt company cheats Joy out of her earnings. All this is made more complicated because Isabel Rosselini gets into the act in a hateful devious self-serving manner. Here the plot becomes incomprehensible and has more to do with star promotion than with story development. In the end, Joy will of course triumph over the corrupt bosses trying to cheat her out of her just deserts and will become a wealthy TV celebrity herself. But only after several false starts that jerk the story along to a more or less triumphant conclusion.
In sum, an extremely dumb movie which in its dumbness has been nominated for the Golden Globes, and has Jennifer in the running (Again!) for a Best Actress Oscar. In a way I think she deserves it for her ability to inject life into an utterly ridiculous, badly written character, in a deadly dull movie. (Another in that category this year, Cate Blanchett in Carol). O. Russell is the kind of film school director who seems to think that an excessively convoluted plot populated with a cast of unsavory characters and opening credits at the end instead of the beginning, qualifies the work as "Art". As for the nominaters who have put "Joy" up for a best film award, i am reminded of the one about the befuddled viewer at an exhibition of abstract modern art who, when asked: "What do you like?" Replies: "I don't know what I like -- but I know what I'm supposed to like". Bottom Line: Great Jennifer in a Pit of a picture -- in this disputed Oscar season it can only add fuel to the fire of good black films nudged out by bad white ones.