Joy (2015)

"Joy" is a film about the striving life of Joy Mangano played by Jennifer Lawrence,that is set in the late 80's. Joy and her family are all known to be failures, living with her divorced parents, her children and ex-husband.Her father has had multiple failed marriages and her mother sits in bed all day watching bogus soap operas. Her grandmother Mimi; who acts as a narrator throughout the film, was her motivation during her childhood as Joy was an inventor. Joy is yet to believe that she is about to give up on life but just after her incident whilst moping away the broken glasses of wine, she decides to invent a brand new mop, which she thinks may help others and make for good business, but most importantly to regain herself and who she is. Throughout the film, she experiences some up's and down’s, decides to take matters into her own hands, literally. Jennifer Lawrence played as my favorite character because has undertaken a role that is not entirely her forte, but she has acted out the character so well and played it out so naturally. As for Cooper, I would say that he was irrelevant and rushed at the end of the film, he should not be considered as a main character because he was hardly in the film and was my least favorite. In my opinion, Joy would have worked immensely better if the characters were not over exaggerated and the movie being two-and-a-half hours long. I didn’t find the stretched-out introduction to her less than “encouraging” family that emotionally-accesible. That being said her character development was extraordinary, her character’s transition to success in the second half is where the movie gets comical and suspenseful. The cinematographe was astounding considering this is a social-realism type of film, it does not carry any visual effects, yet the late 80’s aesthetic and vivid coloring made the film shockingly not boring. Overall the film makes you gain confidence and also makes you realize how important character identity crisis is and independence.