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Joy-rm

This is movie is based on the real life of Joy Mangano who went from “rags to riches” as an inventor and entrepreneur who sells her products on the television shopping networks. Jennifer Lawrence carries this movie with an outstanding performance, as she shows a wide range of emotion and understanding of her character.

We meet Joy, a young struggling mother with a dysfunctional family who invents a mop with great features. She cobbles together the resources to make a model of it and convinces shopping network executive, Neil Walker (Bradley Cooper) to consider this product to be pitched on live TV. She has to borrow money and mortgage her home to have the funds to make the inventory needed to be available. There are exciting moments about impending success but some behind-the-scenes patent and manufacturing shenanigans make it seem like bankruptcy is looming and Joy has to decide whether to give up her dream.

We have not really spoiled the film for you because it is much more than this brief outline of the plot. The essence of this story is not about the outcome because this is known since it is touted as a true story. The reason that this movie will resonate with many viewers is because it shows how important childhood relationships can make a big difference in a person’s life. We see early on in the film the dysfunctional family environment, in which Joy is living. She struggles to make ends meet working during the day as an airline reservations clerk, and then moonlights helping out with the business books for her father’s (Robert Di Niro) auto parts business. She lives with her divorced mother (Virginia Madsen) who sits around all day watching soap operas. Her ex-husband, Tony (Edgar Ramirez) is a second rate singer who lives in the basement of her small house practicing his music most of the time. Along comes her father who just broke up with a girlfriend and needs a place to live, so he moves into the basement with her ex-husband. The father has a new girlfriend, Trudy (Isabella Rossellini) who has her own place but mainly hangs around in Joy’s house also. There is her young daughter, Christie (played by Aundrea and Gia Gadsby) who seems to idolize Joy. One more person lives in the house and that is the grandmother (Diane Ladd) who is actually the narrator for a good part of the film.

Director/writer, David O. Russell (known for Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle) along with screenwriter, Annie Mumolo (who wrote Bridesmaids and contributed to the TV series, Modern Family and Transparent) have chosen to tell the story of this determined self-made woman. But in our opinion the real story which is shown here is how Joy was molded by her grandmother who encouraged her to believe in her own creativity as a small girl. The voice of the grandmother as the narrator is the voice in Joy’s head, which allowed her to have the confidence to persist in her goals. There is also a similar identification being acted out by the next generation in the person of her daughter, Christie. We frequently see Christie’s eyes glued to her mother’s face as her mother struggles with her challenges. In one scene when Joy is desperately trying to interest people in her mop by doing a demonstration in the supermarket parking lot, we see the daughter doing the same thing in the background with a toy mop. It is the transmission of confidence to young children from a loved cherished figure that can make all the difference in the world. This can supersede poverty and hardships and lead to success in so many aspects of life. We believe that this is the underlying emotional message of this very fine movie. (2015)

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Inside Out

We were  tag alongs as our children took our nine and six-year-old grandchildren to see the 3D Pixar animated film released by Walt Disney Studios titled Inside Out. Things appeared to get off a good start as the coming attractions were shown of several different animated features most in 3D. They each had interesting appealing characters, music and special effects. They showed us all the highlights and the audience was obviously delighted.

Things then settled in for the feature film. One of us used to make up a story that he told our kids when they were very young how inside of us there were numerous teeny people who looked exactly like each of us and they would run all our bodily systems. Some run our digestive system, others run our hearing and seeing senses, or heart system. There was a central control headquarters that controlled our locomotion and there was a brain central where our thinking was run. We had lots of fun with these stories. Well, more or less this is the premise of this movie. The main character is a little girl who moves with her family from Minnesota, where they had a large house and played hockey in the winter, to San Francisco where she has to go to a new school and make new friends. We see the inside workings of this little girl’s mind through various “people” who control her emotions. In this case they don’t look exactly like her but they are representations of her in a joyful state, depression, anger, fear, disgust, etc. Each of these characters is very interesting, likeable, and a really great cartoon. The inner workings of her brain are depicted including long-term memories whether they be happy or sad.  The animated graphics filled the screen as we saw memories in the form of thousands of balls rolling down various chutes. There is a dream department that creates dreams which is all very creative.

While the on-screen images and voices might hold the attention of the children some of the time, we doubt that anyone under 12 would follow the actual plot and all its nuances. It is also hard for us to believe how anyone over 20 would care about 102 minutes of this story which actually seemed much longer to us. However, in this case it seems that we are clearly in the minority here as this movie is receiving outstanding reviews and appears to be one of the top rated Pixar films that has come out in a long time. (2015)