Lou Lumenick

Lou Lumenick

Movies

‘Joy’ makes it official — Jennifer Lawrence is a real movie star

An exuberant and grittily determined Jennifer Lawrence hoists David O. Russell’s “Joy,” a manically screwball-ish comedy-drama loosely based on the struggles of Joy Mangano, the housewife who invented the Miracle Mop and became a home-shopping superstar.

Lawrence, who at 25 is about a decade too young for the role, gives the kind of big, Golden Age-movie-star performance rarely seen these days. Her decisive portrait of female empowerment cuts through narrative bloat and fussy direction as if they were so much waxy buildup.

Though Mangano is credited as an associate producer, neither her last name nor the name of the product is ever mentioned in the movie, which saddles its Job-like Joy (Lawrence) with a wildly dysfunctional extended family straight out of Russell’s “Silver Linings Playbook.”

A divorced mother of three young children living in a generic American suburb (Mangano is a Long Islander, but the film was shot near Boston) in the early 1990s, Joy struggles to support a house full of freeloading relatives while working a series of dreary jobs.

Among those living with her and the kids are Joy’s divorced mother (Virginia Madsen), who spends her days in bed watching soap operas, and Joy’s ex-husband Tony (Edgar Ramirez), an aspiring musician. He’s sharing the basement with the newest arrival, Joy’s ne’er-do-well father, Rudy (Robert De Niro), whose latest wife has sent him packing.

Jennifer Lawrence (from left), Robert De Niro and Edgar Ramirez in “Joy.”Merie Weismiller Wallace/Twentieth Century Fox

It seems highly doubtful that the real Joy Mangano — who had a degree in business administration from Pace University — would have been foolish enough to wring out a mop full of glass shards with her bare hands, as happens in the movie’s most ridiculous scene.

But that inspires the movie Joy to invent the (unnamed) Miracle Mop — super-absorbent, with a detachable, self-wringing head that can be cleaned in the washing machine.

She manufactures the mops with the backing of Rudy’s new girlfriend, a wealthy widow named Trudy (a hilarious Isabella Rossellini), but no distributor will touch the product. Joy lands a spot for her mop on the nascent QVC network — where it flops, at least until Joy talks a producer into letting her personally pitch the product. She’s a natural.

The producer — a composite character who turns up halfway through the movie — is played by Bradley Cooper, who demonstrated his palpable chemistry with Lawrence in “Silver Linings Playbook.” Cooper’s role is far smaller than Ramirez’s Tony — and there’s no romance this time — but he energizes the movie just when it’s starting to flag. Then, after about 20 minutes, he disappears until the final scene.

Mostly it’s up to Lawrence to wring all the drama and pathos she can out of a battle over patent rights that pushes Joy to the brink of bankruptcy. No surprise that her mettle cleans up all the messiness in “Joy.”