| The story of the inventor of a mop, a very successful one apparently but not one I have ever seen, so presumably times have moved on in the world of mops.
However it is another force-of-nature role for Jennifer Lawrence and so of course it is worth watching. You couldn’t call it a straightforward biography, it’s more like a fantasy-comedy with the emphasis on the relationships in the family of inventor Joy Mangano, who has her ex-husband Tony (Edgar Ramirez) and her dad Rudi (Robert Di Niro) in the basement, her grandmother and mother (watching soaps constantly) upstairs plus herself and her daughter trying to cope with such a gang of hyper-active characters.
Her ex-husband lives only to be a singer, her dad has just been dumped by his latest partner but soon picks up another, one who it happens has some money which might be available for investment. Times are tough for Joy but she thinks she can fight her way out of her problems with her revolutionary design for a new mop with 300 metres of cotton in the head, detachable and cleanable.
She has to learn fast about business, impossibly fast probably, and with help from Tony she finds her way onto the QVC Channel whose executive Neil Walker (Bradley Cooper) believes he might have found a winner.
Some of the problems which surely can’t have been short-lived (getting a second chance on QVC, dealing with dodgy suppliers, untangling a legal minefield of patents etc) are skipped over quite speedily thanks to Joy’s willingness to meet everything head-on. The family is more of a problem.
But you never believe Joy won’t make it through.
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