The epitome of empty Oscar bait

Rating: 4/10 (20 April 2016)

"Joy" is a film from last year and the newest project by writer and director David O. Russell. The filmmaker has received lots of praise and awards recognition in recent years and in my opinion almost none of it was truly deserved. "Silver Linings Playbook" was pretty mediocre. "American Hustle" was downright cringeworthy at times and it is a tough decision, but I think that with "Joy", he did hit a new low. The actors are only partially to blame. Of course, none of them was convincing, but the whole movie falls with the screenplay here. It is a mess, intended to include as many Oscar-bait situations for Lawrence playing a strong, independent female and it all does not only get pretty unrealistic, but downright bad on some occasions. This is certainly a movie that can be summarized as cringeworthy. The runtime of over two hours does not help things at all. The music is okay, but this is probably only because they used well-known songs from that era and nothing original.
If I were the real Joy, I would be disappointed, maybe even offended. This film is never about her. It is all about letting Jennifer Lawrence look as good as possibly with all the material she is given here. And once again it becomes clear that she is an incredibly limited actress. Of course Russell wants us to think otherwise and it comes off as truly try-hard how he attempts to make her seem attractive with great range and tries to trick us into thinking she is one of the best actresses from her age group. She is far from that actually and people probably begin to realize. About time. On a more positive note, I think Bradley Cooper was bearable in here and I am not the greatest fan at all, but I've seen worse from him. But maybe it is just because everybody else in here looks quite bad and it hurts me to see Robert De Niro like this. The dialogues were truly abysmal. David O. Russell continues to disappoint. I cannot talk about his early efforts, but in the last 10 years he came up with a lot of garbage. I recommend you to stay far, far away from "Joy". This one is closer to a */***** than to a ***/*****.