Joy - David O Russell

tunguska

Couldn't find a thread on this so apologies if there is one already......
Went to see Joy tonight with not exactly high expectations. The few reviews I read were not overly enthusiastic to say the least and before Christmas Danny leigh said it was a bit of a mess, although Claudia winkilman said she loved it. I usually agree with Danny but this time I'd have to side with Claudia, I absolutely loved this film. Its got a big heart and is genuinely moving and inspiring. Jennifer Lawrence is brilliant so to is everyone else, the acting is all round top class. Great movie.

Sad Professor

Possibly the biggest dud of Russell's career. Even Lawrence can't save it. It's a sloppy, bewildering muddle that spins its wheels and zigzags all over the place, lurching from one scene to another before pulling an absurd finale out of its arse. It's the story of the woman who invented the Miracle Mop and became a millionaire, but Russell presents her as a tough survivor – what does she survive? Battling the executives of the Shopping Channel to take her seriously, the theft of the patent to her mop, and something about a mysterious Texan mobster. Oh and the usual dysfunctional family antics that feels like outtakes from Russell's previous films. What the hell is the film about? Did Russell even finish writing the script? It makes no sense.

And this is the third time Russell has cast Lawrence in a role that should have gone to a 30-35 year old. It's starting to get silly. It doesn't help that in between Russell collaborations she's still playing teenagers in comic book and YA movie adaptations.

Sad Professor

Sad Professor wrote: »

Possibly the biggest dud of Russell's career. Even Lawrence can't save it. It's a sloppy, bewildering muddle that spins its wheels and zigzags all over the place, lurching from one scene to another before pulling an absurd finale out of its arse. It's the story of the woman who invented the Miracle Mop and became a millionaire, but Russell presents her as a tough survivor – what does she survive? Battling the executives of the Shopping Channel to take her seriously, the theft of the patent to her mop, and something about a mysterious Texan mobster. Oh and the usual dysfunctional family antics that feels like outtakes from Russell's previous films. What the hell is the film about? Did Russell even finish writing the script? It makes no sense.

And this is the third time Russell has cast Lawrence in a role that should have gone to a 30-35 year old. It's starting to get silly. It doesn't help that in between Russell collaborations she's still playing teenagers in comic book and YA movie adaptations.

Pretty harsh! The first 20mins or so I would agree is over the top and very muddled. The attempt to present her chaotic life and all action mentality doesn't really work, but once the film allowed itself to get going I felt it did present her challenges very well. Maybe it hit home for me a bit more as I have been involved in the same business she is in and have seen those pitfalls and can relate, but I thought it gave an interesting narrative on that world, as well as the problems selfish family members in middle america could bring.
Overall I would say definitely a watch for entrepreneurial types, but flawed.

tunguska

Sad Professor wrote: »

Possibly the biggest dud of Russell's career. Even Lawrence can't save it. It's a sloppy, bewildering muddle that spins its wheels and zigzags all over the place, lurching from one scene to another before pulling an absurd finale out of its arse. It's the story of the woman who invented the Miracle Mop and became a millionaire, but Russell presents her as a tough survivor – what does she survive? Battling the executives of the Shopping Channel to take her seriously, the theft of the patent to her mop, and something about a mysterious Texan mobster. Oh and the usual dysfunctional family antics that feels like outtakes from Russell's previous films. What the hell is the film about? Did Russell even finish writing the script? It makes no sense.

And this is the third time Russell has cast Lawrence in a role that should have gone to a 30-35 year old. It's starting to get silly. It doesn't help that in between Russell collaborations she's still playing teenagers in comic book and YA movie adaptations.

Yeah but tell us what you really think, dont hold back now...........I dont get this argument about Jennifer lawerence being too young to play certain characters though. Shes brilliant in this and I bought it 100%. I wasnt sitting in the theatre thinking, well jennifer Lawerence is only 25 so I dont believe her portrayal. Shes not an age or a number, shes playing a role she completely inhabits and thats all that matters. The problem isnt jennifer lawerence, the problem is how you choose to percieve her. You could reject the concept of her age and just take the performance for what it is.

mrsdewinter

Jennifer Lawrence is brilliant - but the movie is a mess. It feels like it was thrown together. Where did the soap opera fit in? Why was the sister able to fly around the country able to act on Joy's behalf? Is that standard business practice? Why was Bradley Cooper there at all? Or why was he presented as a friend when he was an oily TV executive who wanted nothing more than to shift product? Honestly, I feel like I got more of a cohesive narrative from the trailer.

mrsdewinter

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Pretty harsh! The first 20mins or so I would agree is over the top and very muddled. The attempt to present her chaotic life and all action mentality doesn't really work, but once the film allowed itself to get going I felt it did present her challenges very well. Maybe it hit home for me a bit more as I have been involved in the same business she is in and have seen those pitfalls and can relate, but I thought it gave an interesting narrative on that world, as well as the problems selfish family members in middle america could bring.
Overall I would say definitely a watch for entrepreneurial types, but flawed.

Sorry - to take your final point, I thought it was quite useless for entrepreneurial types. We're told at a certain point that the stakes are really high. J - Law will have to get a 2nd mortgage on her house. In the next scene, the loan is a fait accompli. Huh?
What I took from the movie was a) make sure to Double-check the legal advice from the bint your father is sleeping with and b) make sure you have a Deadbeat ex and fab best friend who can do all the hard work.

LFC CONNAUGHTON

The trailer was very deceptive as well, almost making it out to have a massive twist with action and guns and arrests and stuff that turned out to be... a patent dispute.

That_Guy

Easily David O'Russell's worst film imo. Performance wise it's ok but Jennifer Lawrence's character could have easily been done by a relative unknown and still hit all the sweet spots.

At 2 hours it's a really self indulgent mess and never hits the heights.

Disappointing effort.

Decuc500

I liked it, it was a quirky and enjoyable tale though maybe not quite as manic or inspired as Silver Linings Playbook.

Very good ensemble cast playing the extended, dysfunctional family you normally see in an O. Russell film.

His style of filmmaking is very appealing to me. His films are never dull. The camera movements and music cues give his films a style that I like.

It’s really Jennifer Lawrence’s film though. I thought she was excellent.

vidor

I never really get self-indulgence as a valid criticism of a director. I'm certainly no fan of O.Russell but I wish more directors out there were more self-indulgent instead of trying to please everyone.

mrsdewinter

mrsdewinter wrote: »

Sorry - to take your final point, I thought it was quite useless for entrepreneurial types. We're told at a certain point that the stakes are really high. J - Law will have to get a 2nd mortgage on her house. In the next scene, the loan is a fait accompli. Huh?
What I took from the movie was a) make sure to Double-check the legal advice from the bint your father is sleeping with and b) make sure you have a Deadbeat ex and fab best friend who can do all the hard work.

Not at all. QVC and TV shopping is a ruthless avenue for product distribution. They get you to sell at such a tight margin that any change in manufacturing price can immediately put you out of business which would have happened to her had she not found out what her manufacturer was doing and fixed the situation like she did.

With TV shopping you have to manufacture your product upfront, so if the person presenting it screws it up you lose all the money you've spent on manufacturing and are left with a load of stock you have nowhere to sell and this can also put you out of business. She completely changed the game in the industry and kept herself afloat by convincing the exec that would not have given a ****, that she could present and sell the product which she did.
There was plenty of other lessons in there too...

gucci

I would have to side with the “dud” opinions shared above. Last Jan the first movie of 2015 we watched in the cinema was American Hustle, a movie not without its flaws but largely a very watchable and entertaining movie.
This was just really scatter gun stuff right from the start. I am not one to usually pick up on the editing, but it seemed really all over the place? For example:

I am pretty sure we only hear “Trudy” on the phone before 2 scenes later Joy is demanding her dad gets her to invest into her product?

Character development was completely farcical also. You were basically fed the background summation of each character and then they went on to perform exactly as described….little or no progress or development?

Also the climax

Travelling to Texas to stick it to the big scary man in the cowboy hat, that was so underwhelming and lethargic she could have just called him no the bloody phone!!

Pretty disappointing all in all, one of those movies where I was prepared to bite my lip and pretend I enjoyed it to my wife in case I was not seeing some type of female empowerment themes, but she thought it was very much like a made for TV movie.

5/10

minidazzler

I really enjoyed it, but it's no silver linings playbook, it doesn't have a great re-watch factor.

There was a very weird theme where Joy was Jesus though, the cuts on the hand and the washing of the TV Executives feet really seemed a bit biblical... was just a little strange.

Corholio

Watched this earlier and can't believe how poor it is. I'm not even a Russell fan but I don't mind his films but this is a mess really. The term 'lurching' has never been more apt in describing how the scenes go in this, it felt Russell thought 'I wonder if I make it a mess would I still get an Oscar nod?' just for a laugh. I don't get the Lawrence 'excellent performance' thing either. She was good but It felt like a role that a lot of actresses could play. I completely agree with an earlier comment about us being fed what the characters are and then no development with any of them. It's a film I didn't enjoy at all watching to be honest.

JP Liz V1

Well again JLaw picks up another best actress Oscar nomination

Looper007

JP Liz V1 wrote: »

Well again JLaw picks up another best actress Oscar nomination

I think in this case it's more to do with getting her at the awards show more then her performance (she is one of the top 3 stars in the world). She's very good in Joy (the best thing about the film actually) but she wouldn't be in a top 10 best actress performances this year for me. I even think her Oscar winning performance in Silver Lining Playbook was undeserving, Jessica Chastin should have won that year. Her best performance is still Winter Bone for me by quite some distance. But she is the Hollywood darling so no surprise she got nommed this year.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

JP Liz V1 wrote: »

Well again JLaw picks up another best actress Oscar nomination

I was watching the nominations being announced on a live stream and I swear to God I heard a bit of hearty laughter as her name was announced.

Jennifer Lawrence is an extremely talented actress and is capable of doing some great things but her weird relationship with David O Russell is doing her no good. The Hunger Games series is done now so she has nothing to fall back on there. She'll always get work but I guess it depends on what kind of career she wants to have. She strikes me as being quite intelligent or savvy, at least, in interviews, the odd time she's being serious anyway, so I just don't get why she insists on working with Russell. The fact the Academy keeps giving her awards/nominations for the films isn't helping either.

speedboatchase

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

I was watching the nominations being announced on a live stream and I swear to God I heard a bit of hearty laughter as her name was announced.

Jennifer Lawrence is an extremely talented actress and is capable of doing some great things but her weird relationship with David O Russell is doing her no good. The Hunger Games series is done now so she has nothing to fall back on there. She'll always get work but I guess it depends on what kind of career she wants to have. She strikes me as being quite intelligent or savvy, at least, in interviews, the odd time she's being serious anyway, so I just don't get why she insists on working with Russell. The fact the Academy keeps giving her awards/nominations for the films isn't helping either.

X-Men. She's such a big star now that I didn't see her in the blue Mystique look at all in the new trailer.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

speedboatchase wrote: »

X-Men. She's such a big star now that I didn't see her in the blue Mystique look at all in the new trailer.

I think I read that this was the last one she was doing. I could be wrong. I did also read that there was talk of making Mystique the main focus of the X MEN films from now on. Who knows.

Point is she is the highest grossing female actor right now so she undoubtedly has her choice of roles. A lot of that $ came from The Hunger Games though so without that her value for money will fall.

Just to be clear though I've never seen her give a bad performance even in any less than brilliant films but at the end of the day it's how much money she brings in that makes her a marketable star. She's done well so far to balance teen franchise star with serious and respected actress. I just don't think her desire to keep working with David O Russell is going to pay off in the long run.

Looper007

Got so see this yesterday, a bit of a mixed bag for me. First of Jennifer Lawrence is very good in this, but it's not a Oscar worthy one for me. I've seen plenty of better female performances this year. Plus I felt she was probably slightly too young to be playing Joy, a Cate Blachett would have been more suited. I also liked De Niro as Joy dislikeable dad (maybe aside from her ex and her best friend, nearly everyone around Joy were dislikeable especially her half sister). I thought everything up to when she meets Bradley Cooper's character was a hot mess, it seemed the editing and script was off with it bouncing all over the place. When she get's her product on tv the film started to feel a lot more linear and was slightly more easier to watch.

David O Russell is a strange one to me, I thought everything he was doing up to Silver Lining Playbooks was ranging from good to excellent. I think his best film to date is still Three Kings, although The Fighter runs it close. But I started to fall off his bandwagon with American Hustle, a Scorcese rip off and how it got all those Oscar nod's is beyond me. It's a okay film at best. With Joy, aside from J Law getting a Oscar nod (I think more with wanting her at the show then her performance for me personally) it's got nothing. I think its time for Russell maybe get back to the roots of Spanking the Monkey and Flirting with Disaster, stop using J.Law and Cooper. Stop ripping off Scorcese and trying to make Oscar baiting films. Make a low budget film and try to find what made him special in the first place.

r93kaey5p2izun

I saw this a couple of weeks ago and wasn't impressed. I've never seen any other Jennifer Lawrence or David O Russell films and I had no preconceived ideas other than knowing they've been successful at awards ceremonies in recent years. Overall I found it dull. It was slow, it dragged and needed serious editing imo.

I think focusing more on the latter events in the story would have made a better film. This seemed more like another film about a dysfunctional family (which are ten-a-penny) than a story about a creative entrepreneur succeeding against the odds.

I wouldn't fault any of the performances (but agree Lawrence looks too young) but I think the script was lacking.

sportzstar

I thought this was a horrible movie. I find Russell to be horribly over rated. He's trying to be different for the sake of it and it just doesn't work like it does for Wed Anderson.

The story had great potential here and I was just left with the feeling that it was all horribly wasted.

e_e

Not getting the level of disdain for this from some quarters. I'm not familiar with O'Russell's earliest work but I think this is easily his best since the career resurgence began. Much livelier, playful and more positive of spirit than the bloated and dreary crime epic that was American Hustle. Direction, music and cinematography are wonderful and while it has some inconsistencies it's never dull and paints a more interesting satire of American ambition than all the "We're doomed! We're doomed!" stuff we've seen recently.