Joy

A film about how to invent, make, and sell a mop. Admittedly, I didn't expect much, and good thing I didn’t. The plot was oddly unbalanced. The first half almost put me to sleep, and I even considered watching something else. But I hung in there, and boy was it worth it! In the second half, the pace got incredibly fast, and I was on the edge of my seat as the main character was deciding whether to wear pants or a skirt for the TV promotion of her product, and waiting to see if the sales take off or crash. Not even such a stacked cast could pull this one off. At least not for me. (20.06.2016)

During the movie I realized we had the same mop at home. After I finished watching it, we went to visit our friends where I found out they have exactly the same mop. I have never really noticed that before. So I thank this movie that it told me a story of a thing where I would otherwise hardly realize how it came into being, and yet its author had so much trouble with it that many other people would not recover from that shit. However, Joy managed and that is why this movie, which was really sleep-inducing in the beginning, was created. When Joy was so deep in the shit that she started to sell herself in teleshopping (best scene of the whole movie, by the way), the whole movie got quite interesting. It’s a pity Jennifer Lawrence acted in the way she did, even though I normally quite like her. And I don’t even know why. Her acting is really emotionless and pretty arrogant. And it does not even have to be true. Throughout the whole movie I somehow tolerated her as Joy, but she completely knocked me down with the finale. It’s a pity. Biopics really need the compassion of the audience. And after the narration of the story, I missed that a bit. (03.01.2016)

A mop's thorny journey into American households. I confess that I found the synopsis so dull and uninteresting that I wasn't tempted to watch it. At first the film was "quite interesting but nothing special", sometimes quite bizarre with characters behaving strangely (a classic malady of Russell's films), but by the time Joy meets Bradley Cooper's character midway through I was firmly hooked to the final impression of "excellent". The actual scene of the mop being introduced by its creator in the TV commercial was five-star, as was Jennifer's immersion in the role, as she emotionally drove it in like a snowplow. And by the way, winter was a good move, the flying snowflakes gave the narrative an attractive atmosphere, along with the music, which Russell always knows how to use in a film. (27.12.2016)

This is what business is like. Not a time-hopping, broadly speaking, but serving up the initial hell of the business world live with the fabulous Jennifer Lawrence. Scene by scene, shot by shot, all the emotions are spot on and it has incredible energy. For those starting out on a similarly harrowing journey with their idea, it's doubly so. What is incomprehensible then is the initial bitterly Woody Allen-llike build-up, full of odd individuals and strange directorial devices – you have to wait about 30 minutes. But it gets better and clearer towards the end, as does the main character's life journey. Jennifer steals some scenes downright for herself – she should have got the Oscar rather than Brie Larson, but she was in a less commercial flick. (16.05.2016)

An excellent Jennifer Lawrence in an unremarkable bitter comedy about a small-town woman trying to succeed with a patented mop that she invented herself. The story is driven forward mainly by the viewer’s awareness that said mop is now part of almost every household. Crazy family relationships, pop hits, a pleasant poetic winter atmosphere, and a scarcely (and oddly) used Bradley Cooper. The script is surprisingly weak, given it’s by David O. Russell. (24.12.2015)