Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Edgar Ramirez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, Isabella Rossellini, Bradley Cooper

Direction: David O. Russell 

Produced: John Davis Megan Ellison Jonathan Gordon Ken Mok David O. Russell

Written: Annie Mumolo, David O. Russell

Genre: Drama

Duration: 125 Mins

Joy Mangano is as elusive in her private life as the film is with her real persona. Presented as a half-fiction, David O. Russell's latest keeps you guessing between the blurring of fact and fable. As leading lady Jennifer Lawrence puts it herself, “The craziest stuff in the story is true.” Turns out that there is a lot of quirky to sift through.

 Joy is a dead-beat homemaker with two kids (three in real life) and a Venezuelan singer for an ex-husband Tony Miranne (Edgar Ramirez, while Joy's real ex-husband was her fellow business student and former classmate at Pace University). She has an eccentric mother, Terri (Virginia Madsen), who has spent decades on bed, ageing just as the characters on her long-running soap opera are. Her father Rudy (Robert De Niro) is obnoxious and destructive. Her grandmother Mimi (Diane Ladd) is the only solace. Also, the family is in financial doldrums.

This is enough to drive a person to the brink but Joy has her spunk and the smarts to invent The Miracle Mop. The invention is of a self-twisting mop with a detachable handle to be washed in the machine. Despite the accomplishment, she has several obstacles she must overcome before getting the mop into the market and moving on to hundred other patents and trademarks.

Joy Mangano (the surname never being mentioned once in the story) is only a springboard for a fictionalised account of her journey from bankruptcy to home shopping stardom. This is not an intricate biopic which is like a hark-back to O. Russell's earlier film American Hustle which began with the title card - "Some of this actually happened." Accuracy is, therefore, not a concern for the writer-director. Storytelling should have been. And that is where Joy falters.

We begin with the voiceover of Joy's grandmother, who is the narrator of the story. We could have used more of her in the film to speed through the slow bits. Instead, the narration serves mostly as bookends for the film. Mimi claims to be attached to her granddaughter, the only support system in her life. Look closely in the film and there are not any moments between them save a few sentences of pep talk to establish any real intimacy. Tony seems a greater help to Joy.

Jennifer Lawrence simmers through the scenes with anguish and energy, her resilient character overshadowing all others. It is her show all the way, leaving the other A-listers to sit in the shadows and watch the going-ons. It is an underutilisation of the talent and the promise of a rousing drama. It goes in an idiosyncratic mode where Joy has a nightmare, featuring her mother's show and in a later scene has her going in a transformative loop before her great invention. Still, there was a lot of flab to be trimmed and some unnecessary track shots that could have been removed.

Joy is watchable only for the Golden Globe-winning Jennifer Lawrence and some portions of the beginning. Otherwise, you are better off watching an older O. Russell movie.