#1 JOY

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De niro, Edgar Ramirez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, Isabella Rossellini and Bradley Cooper. Written and directed by David O. Russell. Budget $60 million, running time 124 minutes.

Hey do want to hear the true story of the Miracle Mop? If this is your long cherished dream then guess what, you're in for a real treat! Cos David O. Russell has only gone and made the first in what is sure to be a brand new genre – the bio-pics of house hold cleaning utensils. Already he's prepping his next movie, the true life story of how the scouring pad got made and I've heard Speilberg is making the bio pic of the dust pan and brush, which is going to be a warts and all expose, that's going to blown the ruddy lid off the whole corrupt edifice.

In the mean time we have this. Joy, a slow, boring trudge through the slow boring life of the inventor of the miracle mop. With a cast to kill for, David O. Russell has turned the life of Joy Mangano, the inventor of the Miracle Mop, into a dull, staggering dull, boring trawl through the edited low-lights of her life, altering facts where necessary to better serve the demands of a modern cinema audience – hence the surprising gun battle shoot out in the bank in the first act or the alien abduction sequence where it is revealed that Joy is in actuality the re-incarnation of the Queen of the Galaxy and she's hiding on Earth while her son, played by Eddie Rednappy tries to kill her so he can harvest the human race to turn them into an mortality drug. Along the way, she has to deal with a household that includes her father and ex-husband living in the basement, his mother living in the front room, her grandmother who lives in the dining room and her two or three children, who seem to live upstairs. Luckily, Joy's step sister hates her, her father's new girl friend mistrusts her and everyone she meets seems to be trying to steal her ideas, crush her dreams or just humiliate her, particularly if they are a man, because all men in this film except one is a blood-sucking, dream-crushing tyrant, or corrupt buisness men, all except Bradley Cooper who once again fails to make me hate him like I used to.

Through it all Joy, played by Jennifer Lawrence fights and fights, overcoming all obstacles, no matter how dull or boring, or repetitive they might be. The film sort of putt-putts along in first gear until the exciting, dramatic final act, when Joy's Miracle Mop is kidnapped by bad men and Joy is forced to go on a do-or-die mission to rescue it, before her scheming family have her declared bankrupt.

So Joy, changes out of her tartan shirt and suits up in a nice black leather jacket and short hair and goes on the rampage. Using her shape-changing mutant powers, Joy breaks into the evil factory where her miracle Mop is being held and rescues it, leading to a nail-biting showdown with the big bad villain, dressed in a cowboy hat.

Then the film shows us Joy's happy ending and the whole thing sort of stops, like a car rolling slowly along until it bumps, gently, to a halt against a curb.

A joyless, very dull, but well acted dirge of bland tedium but at least the sound track is good. Plus it's still great to see De Niro actually acting again. 

5/10