JOY : Tuesday 5th January 2016.

I saw 'JOY' earlier in the week as Directed, Produced, Written for the screen and based on a story by David O'Russell in another collaboration with his two often used principle stars Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. This film is based loosely on the life of Joy Mangano and is a comedy drama with heart, emotion, tension and a degree of quirkiness that carries this along nicely, delivered by an excellent cast, and is about, at its foundation, the humble household mop! Made for US$60M this film had its New York Premier on 13th December and was released pretty much worldwide at Christmas, having so far made US$55M. Already it has picked up a couple of awards, has been nominated for many others and has many also still pending an outcome, including two Golden Globes.

In the event that you are unfamiliar with the story, it is a semi-autobiographical take on the life of Joy Mangano who is an American inventor, businesswoman and entrepreneur who invented, amongst other things, the self-wringing Miracle Mop which she developed in 1990 and within ten years was selling US$10M worth a year at US$20 each . . . not bad! Here Joy is depicted by Jennifer Lawrence who we meet as a struggling single Mum with two children living in her own mortgaged home with ex-husband of two years Tony (Edgar Ramirez) living in the basement; recently separated Dad, Rudy (Robert De Niro) moving in because his third wife has kicked him out; her mother Terri (Virginia Madsen) a paranoid TV soap opera addicted man hater since she and Rudy split who also rarely gets out of bed, and her grandmother Mimi (Diane Ladd). Added to this Joy works at Eastern Airlines, leaves because of a work restructure and can't afford to pay the bills on her increasingly dilapidated house. It is all a picture to behold! Joy has a half-sister too, Peggy (Elisabeth Rohm) who has grand ideas of running her own business but nothing ever materialises and puts-down Joy at almost every opportunity, often in front of her children.

Rudy owns and runs an auto mechanical workshop, but is 20 years behind the times and struggling to make ends meet. He is active on some dating hot line and connects with recently widowed wealthy Italian Trudy (Isabella Rossellini) and the two hit it off and become an item (yes, it's the Rudy & Trudy show!) Joy grew up with fertile imagination and even at a young age was a would-be-inventor we learn, but then she grew up and all her hopes & dreams got swept along in the current of adult life and the baggage it brings - ex-husbands, divorcing parents, kids, mortgages, career! Then, one day as a result of a wine glass spillage, she has a brain wave for a new kind of mop not previously seen before.

She draws up the plans, develops a prototype, tests it, persuades Trudy to financially back her project and tries to sell it around the traps with minimal success only. She tries to register a patent through Trudy's lawyer and learns that there is a similar product under development out of Hong Kong for which she would need to pay a US$50K royalty in order to put her mop into mass production. She pays and finds a plastics manufacturer in California to mass produce the handle. All is going well but she has still hardly sold any, and has now taken over Rudy's automotive workshop as her production line and hired a small workforce to assemble the finished product.

With money going out like there's no tomorrow and next to nothing coming in, the prospects do not look good for Joy, as Rudy & Trudy start to exert pressure wanting to see some returns. Joy is then introduced to Neil Walker (Bradley Cooper) a senior Executive at the fledgling QVC home shopping television channel (Quality, Value, Convenience) who gives her a break with the mop but insists that his best salesman pitch it on screen. He does so, and the mop bombs (because he's guy and what does a guy know about mops and household chores!). When she thinks all is lost Joy once again picks herself up and persuades Walker for a second shot if she can pitch the mop herself to the television audience. Reluctantly he agrees having already spent US$200K on advance orders upon his advice, that at this point have failed to materialise and for which Joy had to second mortgage her home. She is an instant success and the phones in the studio ring off the hook with orders for the Miracle Mop at US$19.95 each.

Happy Days, but it doesn't all end there, as the California based manufacturer keeps putting up their price, the family move in like circling vultures wanting a piece of the pie, she is given dodgy advice from all quarters, and now the patent for her mop may be invalid having been given poor advice by Trudy's lawyer friend! She files for bankruptcy when the brown stuff hits the fan and there seems no alternative. But Joy is made of sterner stuff, and you can't keep a good woman down. She pours over her contracts with her various business associates and discovers some truths that she can leverage, which she does, and successfully so, which ultimately gets her back on her feet, and back in front of the cameras at QVC. As a result Joy sold 18,000 mops in just half an hour on the growing home shopping network and went on to appear in over 120 hours a year selling her own invented products that range from slimline coat hangers, to home fragrances, to performance shoes and over 100 products to date.

Joy built her own business empire off the back of the home shopping network with sales in excess of US$150M a year, and in the process helps out young inventors looking for a break, just as she did years before. She cared for her growing children and ageing family all the way through despite family in fighting, lawsuits claiming the rights to the company she built, and many business challenges. Tony her ex-husband remained close and became a top business advisor together with long term loyal childhood friend Jackie (Dascha Polanco).

I enjoyed the film, and can easily watch Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence who clearly share an on-screen chemistry and have been regular co-stars over successive films, mostly with this Director. The story keeps this rags to riches determination against the odds story grounded and interesting and there is plenty going on to maintain the attention throughout the film - most of it relevant to the mop in hand story, and some of it not! It is the quirky side stories that maintain the momentum across four generations of the same family that propel what would otherwise be a fairly pedestrian film, which as a result is greater than the sum of its parts. Worthy of your $20.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-