Joy

This review may contain spoilers!

Don't let the trailers or the Jennifer Lawrence hype train fool you, Joy is a boring biopic about the self-wringing mop. I would give Joy a 3/10.

The cinematography in this film had a deft way of making dialogue scenes really interesting while also setting up some amazing visual shots throughout, the director had a very clear visual style that worked for this film.

Jennifer Lawrence, who played Joy, might not have been the perfect casting choice for this film but she really makes the role her own; ultimately it isn't until Lawrence starts inventing and fighting for her invention that we really connect with her role. Bradley Cooper, who played Neil Walker, was a brilliant businessman and show man in this film; you find it quite infectious when he works the set in the infomercial scenes. Edgar Ramirez, who played Tony, is an incredibly likeable character in this film; he has a very genuine and entertaining presence. Diane Ladd, who played Mimi, is the perfect narrator for the film; she brings so much heart to the plot and really grounds the story. Aundrea Gadsby and Gia Gadsby, who played Christie, doubled up on playing one of the strongest comedic performers in the film; I like the relationship these girls created with Lawrence.

However the best performance of the film came from Robert De Niro, who played Rudy. De Niro is kinda cocky and arrogant in this film, he's very selfish and driven. This is a role I haven't really seen De Niro take on in a while and he pulls it off quite well. This is a role who will serve himself and his own interests before that of his own daughter. De Niro performs a character who is at the same time very realistic and very confrontational.

This is a slow film that has no clue how to pace itself; it takes a long time for the invention of the mop to be introduced and even after the mop becomes a success we have to watch through another twenty or so minutes of really boring and redundant content. Ultimately the subject matter of this film isn't made engaging enough for the audience, the film is riddled with boring or irrelevant subplots while assaulting us with cheap gags or strange soap opera metaphors. The editing of the film lets down the fantastic cinematography quite a bit, the cuts happen very abruptly and pull you out of the sluggish story. The score for this film is terrible but worse than that is the soundtrack; the songs used have no consistency to them and as a result the film loses it's sense of tone completely.

Virginia Madsen, who played Terry, felt like a cartoon character; she was artificially written and acted out. Isabella Rossellini, who played Trudy, gave a performance that was far too over the top; also she was meant to be in a relationship with De Niro in this film so it would have been nice if they'd had a bit of chemistry. Dascha Polanco, who played Jackie, was really underutilised in this film; at the end of the day you feel a character who meant so much to Joy should have had a lot more scenes. Elisabeth Rohm, who played Peggy, was a really frustrating bland performance; frankly they had an antagonist in Peggy that wasn't written well enough and should have been given to a better actress than Rohm. Susan Lucci and Laura Wright, who played Danica and Clarinda respectively, were perhaps my least favourite part of the film; between these two actresses came the awful soap opera sequences that really let this film down. Jimmy Jean-Louis, who played Touissant, was a role that didn't have to exist and probably was given more screen time than he desrved; I don't even want to talk about how cringeworthy the relationship between him and Madsen was. Isabella Crovetti-Cramp, who played Young Joy, wasn't a very good child actress; her line delivery felt like a robot was talking to the camera. Melissa Rivers, who played Joan Rivers, brought one of the most redundant characters of the film to screen; it was as horrifying to see Joan Rivers in this film as it was in real life. Ken Cheeseman, who played Gerhardt, was an antagonist that was very hastily crammed into the last twenty minutes of the film; the script really should have focussed much more upon this role because by the time he was introduced I had long stopped caring.