Jennifer Lawrence could have released 2 hours of her praising herself to the same effect

Rating: 3/10 (13 January 2016)

My mother is the kind of person who, when walking out of a movie, always has something good to say about it regardless of how bad the movie was. We saw this movie together along with my brother and a friend of mine and when we were walking through the parking lot afterwords she was suspiciously quiet.
I was hesitant to give this movie such a low rating because I can think of movies that were objectively much, much worse but frankly the complete lack of substance makes it hard to give it any kind of rating.
The plot seemed simultaneously dragged out and rushed and contained zero suspense because no legitimate stakes were really raised and even if they had been, I cared so little about the characters that it wouldn't have mattered.
Jennifer Lawrence's character is trying so hard to be The Every Man that it comes across as painfully fake and her performance was very much sub par. Every other performance in the movie was not all that memorable, even in regards to a few bigger name stars.
Two separate characters die over the course of the movie, one of whom is never actually fully seen on screen. Both times Joy seems to have moved on completely by the next scene.
A huge problem this movie had was in its attempt to retain some kind of vaguely political message without actually taking a firm stance on the issues in play. For example, there's a scene that essentially ripping on Joan Rivers for being anti-feminist and yet, we never really see Joy struggling in the work place for being a woman or having her decisions questioned by the men she works for. She seems to have it remarkably easy actually, and most of the things that go wrong are solidly on her. Another aspect of this is in the fact that they're poor and it causes Plot Issues but this is never truly discussed in any meaningful way. We are told that they are poor and that it causes problems, but they never really talk about it nor do they ever seem to face real consequences for the fact.
Really the only positive things I have to say about this movie are: the soundtrack was good when it showcased period appropriate tracks as opposed to generic drama movie background music and I was very glad that Bradley Cooper and Lawrence didn't hook up in this movie.
Overall, exactly as bad as I expected it to be and definitely not worth the watch.