‘Joy’ not such a joy – despite its huge star power

I prefer viewing a piece of art with as few preconceived ideas as possible. I attended the screening of Joy with said mentality and only with the knowledge that it starred Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro. So it was to my surprise that throughout the first act I found myself in the midst of a dark comedy family drama. For it to then sourly transform into the most common category that exits in cinema today, the “unsung hero bio pic”, was fairly unfortunate as I was gripped to my chair till that point.

The film opens with a scene from a soap opera that our protagonist’s mother is watching. All too obviously telling us that what we are about to watch story-wise, is what our characters are reflecting in the soapie that Joy’s mother is so engrossed with on television. It is a motif that is revisited a few times over the course of the film. We are introduced to Joy and her family who are living in squalidly conditions with their extended family. Even Joy’s ex-husband lives in their basement. Then all too quickly, the soapie motif disappears altogether just to focus on Joy and her achievements. Her trials and tribulations are quite predictable and fit into the common pattern of the typical biopic.

As I was viewing the film and developing that sour feeling in my stomach that I was on an atypical rise of a working class woman story, I felt that the filmmakers may have been able to take what was a reasonable amount of material and perhaps make a cable mini-series. It would definitely give the chance to develop the supporting cast’s characters of whom all play an important part in Joy’s journey.

De Niro, Lawrence and the rest of the cast play their roles just fine, even if perhaps a little too broadly. However, for a piece like this to be in the oeuvre of timelessness is a feat the filmmakers are not quite able to achieve. Which is unfortunate for director and auteur David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabees, The Fighter) whose back catalog is quite renowned for it’s daringness and cavalierism in some respects.

Also, having the knowledge that it was shot on 35mm film may have heightened my expectations. For that, the film is beautifully lit and shot from studio set pieces, to locations aplenty.

There are lots of good scripts to be had. The problem, however, is after the fact, when producers and directors, respectively, take over into the process of trying to make something, in this case, more broad and linear.

I suspect that this film had a few too many cooks, which is not an unusual case in a studio film, or any film for that matter. If perhaps they played it as a more subtle and realist piece of drama, it may not have been so fleeting for one to dismiss as just another unsung hero biopic.  Gavin Raye

‘Joy’ currently screens in cinemas nationally.