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Joy (2015)
Reviewed on 2024 April 13
I am going to go into this admitting a soft spot for two things — movies about underdogs, and movies that can take something mundane like a mop, and keep me interested. Bias or not, I enjoyed this. This is the story of Joy Mangano, and the struggles she went through to create, of all things, a decent mop. Sound boring? Absolutely. Was it? Nope.
From the beginning of the film you get the feeling that Joy (Jennifer Lawrence) was dumped by the Zygote Fairy into the wrong family. Even as a little kid she’s creative and likes to solve problems and flex her imagination. She sure didn’t seem to get her creativity from her mother Terry, (Virginia Madsen), who for the purposes of this film only seemed to pass on a pretty face and amazing head of hair to her daughter. Mom spends her time watching silly soap operas. Still, Terry is at least more of a passive obstacle. Most of her family, including her own father (Robert DeNiro), seems to take an extreme delight in blocking Joy when she comes up with something that benefits just about any homeowner: a decent mop. Joy dreamed up something that you can also clean properly, so you don’t feel your skin creeping off your body if you use it in the kitchen after you mop up a bathroom floor. Her design is brilliant, her idea sound, and therefore in retaliation we see the universe seeming to throw obstacle after obstacle at her for the rest of the run time.
The acting is solid, plus this movie seems to point out a couple of truisms. It seems that the simpler something should be to accomplish, the more of a pain it is to pull it off. Patents and business may be complicated, but ideally family shouldn’t. You never know who is going to support or align against you. It was interesting to see her ex-husband (Edgar Ramirez) and her best friend (Dascha Polanco, playing the world’s best BFF), supporting her more than her own blood. That leads to another observation: people seem to be more interested in dragging you down when you’re trying to accomplish something, instead of thinking how everyone can benefit. Her half-sister Peggy (Elizabeth Rohm, doing a stellar job with spartan dialogue and powerful smug glances) was a crystalline example of the kind of person who would try to stop you, rather than thinking of how you could both get that retirement fund and beach home working together. Even more though, DeNiro’s character fascinated me. Ol’ dad, an entrepreneur himself, could have given her more moral support and never had to work another day in his life at his own sound business, but on some level I think he was threatened.
Three chocolate morsels.
— Shukti
