Tedious, With A Few Decent Performances

Rating: 6/10 (17 January 2016)

Joy is a loosely based film on Joy Mangano, an entrepreneur and inventor who became an overnight success after inventing the miracle mop, but not without overcoming personal and professional obstacles.
Not much to like about this film. Joy is a very David O. Russell-Esque film, meaning that the film focuses so much on the characters that, at times, it can take away from the plot/storyline. American Hustle, also a David O. Russell film, has many scenes in which the characters are improvising in order to more powerfully express the character's feeling and emotions. Which can very affective, but films like these are always in danger of going off course plot-wise. This occurs as well in Joy, which works as a benefit for Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro, as they can use their superior acting skills to their advantage in films with a lot of improvisation. Other aspects of the film such as the music, screenplay, and the cinematography offer nothing special. If the screenplay had been balanced between character dialogue/improvisation, and actually plot, the screenplay would be a little better. But because of the focus mostly on the characters and less on the effectiveness of the story-line, the screenplay was not good enough. Overall, besides the relatively strong acting performances by Lawrence and De Niro, of course, the other aspects of the film only barely live up to average scores.
Direction: 6/10, Cinematography: 7/10, Acting: 8/10, Music: 6/10, Screenplay: 5/10
Overall: 6/10