I loved this inspirational, quirky story, Ayn-Randish though it was

Rating: 9/10 (6 August 2016)

This movie has a lot of aspects that might drive someone up a wall. But not me, apparently.
First, there's no simple answer to the question of whether this is really a biopic about Joy Mangano. On the one hand, it's a movie about a woman about Joy (last name never stated) who invented the "Miracle Mop" and shares some other biographical details with Mangano, and Mangano has executive producer credit, so of course it is! On the other hand, there are noticeable differences between "Joy" and Mangano, and Writer/Director Russell says that Joy is a composite. But back on the first hand there are plenty of acknowledged biopics which have changed details to get a better story, and if you saw a movie about a guy from Virginia named "George" who became the first president of the US you wouldn't think hard about whether it was a biopic. You would very much like to find out what Mangano's relatives think about the portrayal of Joy's relatives in the movie, but it looks like you'll never find this out.
The movie looks a lot like it would look if it were an adaptation of a somewhat amateurish autohagiographical memoir by a woman who is very proud of herself, ready to settle scores with some people and gild her own lily some and certainly sell more mops and other fine consumer products. Was Joy's (the real Mangano or the fictional Joy, take your pick) struggle for entrepreneurial success really as exciting and rollercoasterish as in the movie? Were her relatives really that horrible? Did she really have to go to Lancaster and California and Texas and fight it out all those times to rescue her mop single-handedly the way it is on screen? Did she really have all those dreams and a supernatural experience? I wouldn't bet on it. So I might think this movie was cheap and brassy and manipulative. But in fact I suspect the movie is meant to look and feel pretty much exactly the way it does - like a truthy sales pitch sort of like you might see on QVC. For me it actually works.
It works for me even though my own politics and economics are pretty collectivist, and this movie can be read as a paean to American entrepreneurialism right out of an Ayn Rand novel. This includes the portrayals of her father, half-sister, and stepmother- equivalent/investor, superbly portrayed by Robert De Niro, Elisabeth Rohm, and Isabella Rossellini as the most toxic, selfish, grasping, and stupidly parasitic relatives in the history of all worlds, except (I don't think this is a coincidence) for Henry Rearden's horrible relatives in "Atlas Shrugged". They are about tied. (I really have to pause here to again applaud the performances of this ensemble, who, aided by the screenplay, make floods of attacks on Joy's abilities and character and self-worth seem like natural language.) As in "Atlas" they all live off Joy's self-sacrifice and genius, and yet they are ready to kill the goose and pilfer the eggs at any time. (Or this may be just the way "Joy" remembers it...)
So Joy works just as hard to make her mop as Henry Rearden did to make his new alloy, and launches herself (spoiler?) on her path to a position of wealth and power from which she can give the essential hand-up to other creative young women, just as the Bradley Cooper entrepreneur did for her. This is the un-nuanced myth which is so deceitful when it becomes the sole basis for real-life policy (in my view anyway). And yet it doesn't make me hate the movie. It at least comes across as very sincere (or "truthy" at least), and, hey, it is about an individual fighting against all obstacles from one end of the movie to the other. Sort of like "John Wick", except with Jennifer Lawrence, no guns, and a better variety of action.
Well, is it "predictable" that Joy will succeed and sell many mops? Yes, of course it is. It would be even if you didn't know that Joy was somehow related to noted successful mop-inventor and mop-seller Mangano! But so what, really? Hmm? Is it predictable that Katniss (to pull a heroine randomly out of the air) isn't just going to die in the first hour of "Hunger Games"? Yeah. And? This might be a good time to say that I approve of Jennifer Lawrence's Oscar nomination for this. And even though the idea of putting a single number up as an evaluation of the goodness of any work is pretty silly, still those are the rules of the game, and within that game I stand by my nine stars.