Joy

Rating: 5/10 (20 June 2020)

The Joy of Mopping is lost in a bizarre screenplay which is so unstructured. It keeps going to a soap opera that Joy's bedridden mother keeps watching but then the soap opera element is dropped. The director knows it is not working.
David O Russell wanted Joy to be a quirky feminist movie of empowerment.
Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence) lives in a dysfunctional household. She is a single mother with her ex husband living in the basement.
When Joy has an idea of a self wringing mop. Her father Rudy (Robert De Niro) has some manufacturing knowledge, his latest girlfriend Trudy (Isabella Rossellini) has money to invest.
However Joy struggles with her lack of business acumen. She is being fleeced by the manufacturer of her mop, her family give her the wrong advice or make the wrong decisions. Even after the mop proves to be a hit on the shopping channel QVC. Joy is still heavily in debt.
A starring vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence, she got an Oscar nomination but she did not wipe the floor on Oscar night. Despite being a strange movie, it is all about a mop that went on to wring its competitors.