It is not often that audiences are so thoroughly captivated by a story centered on one woman and her mop. However the director and screenwriter, David O. Russell, did a magnificent job drawing his audience in for an emotional rollercoaster of a movie. And the star-studded cast of Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and Robert de Niro certainly added to the charm.

The film itself centers on the story of Joy Mangano, who is a self-made American entrepreneur, businesswoman, and inventor of several well-known household items such as the Miracle Mop and the Huggable Hangers. Joy has become one of the most successful business moguls, accounting for a net worth of around fifty million dollars. However in the beginning, life for Joy was not easy. In contrast to her now plentiful lifestyle, Joy spent much of her early life on the brink of poverty. The movie portrays Joy and her struggle to become the wealthy businesswoman she is today.

In the beginning of the movie, the audience is introduced to a happy little girl named Joy, who has a close relationship to her parents and grandmother, and has a knack for creating things with her hands. Then immediately the audience is introduced to an older Joy who is now the only source of income for her household and takes care of her two children, her parents (who are divorced) and her ex husband. She also has a rather snarky and occasionally traitorous stepsister who involves herself into their lives. Then step-by-step, the audience learns about what happened to Joy in the time since she was a child. We learn that Joy fell in and out of love with her ex-husband Tony Miranne, and that her parents went through a bitter divorce resulting in her father’s copious love life and her mother’s isolation from the rest of the world.

The plot picks up when Joy’s family is invited by Trudy – her father’s wealthy girlfriend- to come on her yacht for an evening. While the evening starts off well, it took a downturn when someone drops their drink on the floor, and it all ends with Joy having to mop a broken glass of red wine off of the floor. In the process, she ends up cutting her hands and that is what sparks her idea to make the self-wringing miracle mop that is much more conventional, durable, and hygienic than all the mops in productions at the time. She designs the mop, and then encourages her father and Trudy to invest in her business.

What Joy didn’t know was that her battle had only just begun. From there forth she had to deal with unsupportive and doubtful friends, many issues with advertising, struggles with getting a patent for her invention, massive amounts of debt, and many shady business deals. The deadliest blow came from Joy’s step-sister who eventually succeeded in sabotaging Joy, resulting in Joy cutting herself off from her stepsister, her father, and Trudy. Eventually Joy gets what she wants and ends up becoming bigger than she could have ever dreamed of becoming.

Filled with amazing dialogue and perfectly shot scenes, the movie does not disappoint. The theme of determination and purpose fill the audience with hope and optimism, while the heartbreaking scenes of failure fill the reader with restlessness. All in all, the movie Joy was a well done and perfectly thought out piece of cinema.