Joy's reviews
Media reviews
The Telegraph
It?s a giddy, confounding, recklessly brilliant fairy tale of self-empowerment, fuelled by the redemptive magic of the movies.
The Hollywood Reporter
As is always the case with Russell's films, the actors are all wired, completely on their games. Once again, Lawrence rises to the occasion and takes charge, bringing to life a character who fights the fight for several decades and comes out on top.
Chicago Sun-Times
It?s a Cinderella story, complete with mop (...) 'Joy' is a mixed bag ? part dark comedy, part dysfunctional family study, part inspirational tale ? and it ends about 15 minutes after it could have ended.
New York Post
But the movie, in all its mess and glory, belongs almost entirely to Ms. Lawrence. She is the kind of movie star who turns everyone else into a character actor.
Rolling Stone
It's brings out the best in Russell and Lawrence to show Joy fighting to retain her humor and humanity in a world of crass commercialism.
Screen Daily
In Russell's best recent movies, the spontaneous combustion between lively temperaments ? not to mention between actors who have been given the freedom to deliver big performances ? can be liberating and infectious. But in Joy, the technique starts to feel like a gimmick, Russell unable to conjure up comparable improvisational pleasures.
Variety
It?s hard not to wish ?Joy? were better, that its various winsome parts added up to more than a flyweight product that still feels stuck in the development stage.
El País
Assumes that the epic match hapless but tenacious inventor to succeed and raise their strange family can get sentimentally to the receiver. It isn't my case. But at least it doesn't irritate me.
Entertainment Weekly
If only Russell trusted Mangano?s true story. Instead, he?s turned her life into a over-staged mess of awkward exposition, contrived dialogue, and characters so willfully unreal they feel acrylic.