DYSFUNCTIONAL doesn't even start to describe Joy Mangano's extended family. She is divorced, with two daughters, but her ex lives in the basement of her house, hanging around while he tries to revive his deflated career as a lounge singer. Joy's parents are divorced too. Her mom stays in bed all day watching soaps and falls in love the plumber. Her dad can't seem to dissociate himself from the family and moves into the basement, sharing space with her ex-husband. And oh, Joy's older sister delights in bullying her.
Joy is the breadwinner of this madhouse. As an airlines booking clerk, she is barely able to hold things together because nobody ever gives her a hand. The only sympathetic member of the family is her grandmother. With a family like that, you'd wonder how Joy has restrained herself from picking up a gun and going on a shooting rampage. She did pick up a shotgun at one point and fired off a few rounds, but only to let off steam after a particularly exasperating day.
"Joy" is loosely based on a true-to-life character who became the matriarch of a TV shopping empire in the 1990s. It reunites the ensemble of Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert de Niro and Director David O. Russell who last teamed up for the romantic comedy, "Silver Linings Playbook."
What turned around Joy's life? Magic Mop. One day she cut her hands picking up wine glass fragments on the floor with a rag. She thought, there must be a better way to clean up a mess. So she invented a mop that can be wrung without ever touching the head.
Joy believes her invention is a market winner and puts together a prototype. When she shows it to her family, the consensus was that Magic Mop would never take off.
But Joy doesn't give up easily. She mortgages her house and wheedles a loan from the present love interest of her dad. She puts up a small factory in her dad's auto parts shop to assemble the mop.
Things go from bad to worse. The local stores refuse to retail Magic Mop. She sets up a demo in a supermarket parking lot, but was arrested by police.
We told you it wouldn't work out, Joy's family chorus. Give it up and cut your losses.
Undaunted, Joy presses on. A light bulb in her mind switches on while she was watching a TV home shopping show.
She meets with Neil Walker, an executive at QVC, a TV shopping network. Walker agrees to give Magic Mop a shot. The darn thing, however, malfunctions during a live demonstration.
We knew it wouldn't work, Joy's family chorus again.
With a second mortgage on her house and a looming bankruptcy, Joy teeters on the brink of desperation. She makes a highly emotional plea to Walker to let her demonstrate her product herself. He agrees.
This time, in the hands of its maker, Magic Mop works like a dream. The hallelujah moment comes when the network phones start ringing like crazy and the orders, flashed onscreen, climb past 50,000.
You'd think it would be smooth sailing for Joy and her start-up company from this point on. But bigger obstacles lie in wait that will test Joy's mettle and perseverance.
Lawrence may not have won this year's best actress Oscar for "Joy" (the award went to Brie Larson for "Room") but that doesn't in any way take the shine out of her remarkable performance in the film. Russell needed someone who could project the sense of purpose and strength of someone who went through hell and high water to achieve success, and Lawrence fills the bill beautifully.
Cooper, who plays Walker, has a less engaging role in "Joy" than in "Silver Linings Playbook," but he comes through as someone far more interesting than the man who gave Joy her big break. Robert de Niro is utterly convincing as Joy's father Rudy, who lacks the balls to defend her daughter when the entire family was bearing down on her.
"Joy" combines the American Dream and women empowerment into one soap-opera-cum-fairy-tale. And it works.