Despite ‘Joy’ being less comical to me when compared to ‘Spy’ and Jennifer Lawrence being no where close to Melissa McCarthy in the department of comedy in these two films, Lawrence, amazingly scooped the Golden Globes’ 2016 Best Actress for comedy with her performance in ‘Joy‘.
And she is even tipped for an Oscar nomination; that’s how confusing things get these days with films— but then, “it’s universally acknowledged that the Oscars hardly ever awards true comedy performances.”
Nevertheless, Jennifer Lawrence perfectly plays a strong lead in ‘Joy’, a half truth biopic of Joy Mangano, a revolutionary self-wringing mop inventor who enjoyed unimaginable success in the 90s—selling on the then popular QVC shopping channel.
‘Joy’ tells a story of a rise from grass to grace in the world of commerce but that was just for the outside world—the film takes us deep into the family setting of Joy, where chaos was the order of the day.
Joy Mangano (played by Jennifer Lawrence) was a single mother who had to forgo college to stay behind in a small town with her divorced mother- Carrie (played by Virginia Madsen) and father- Rudy (played Robert De Niro); helping both in different ways as one struggled to put his life back on the track and the other locks herself in bed, watching daytime Soap Opera.
The life of Joy was hectic at the family level, more like the drama her bedbound mother was glued to: she had her divorced fruitless husband- Tony (played Edgar Ramirez) living in the basement of what had only become the family house because her father kept supporting with the mortgage payments.

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