Jennifer Lawrence Is Ready to Pick Up the Gun in New ‘Joy’ Trailer
Everybody step aside: Jennifer Lawrence is taking charge. The new trailer for Joy (in theaters Dec. 25) promises a tour de force from Lawrence as a young housewife who single-handedly builds a business empire and won’t let anyone get in her way.
Like the first trailer for David O. Russell’s comedy-drama, this one is framed as an older woman’s advice to a young girl. But this time, the voiceover isn’t young Joy being told she’ll grow up and marry a nice man; it’s Joy (Lawrence) giving her own daughter the opposite advice. “The world doesn’t owe you a thing,” she says. “You realize that the only thing you’re going to have is what you make.”
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As she speaks, we see Joy’s journey from young overachiever (“I was valedictorian in high school”) to a woman whose ambitions have come to a standstill, thanks in part to her needy, unsupportive family. “Maybe your dreams are on hold for now,” suggests her handsome future husband, played by Édgar Ramírez. “That’s a nice way of putting it,” she replies. But after becoming a stay-at-home mom in her 20s, Joy is driven to finally take her future into her own hands and become an inventor. She starts her own company, with support from a Home Shopping Network executive played by Bradley Cooper — but not from her parents. “It’s my fault. I gave her the confidence to think that she was more than just an unemployed housewife,” moans her father (Robert De Niro). Undeterred, Joy becomes a ruthless entrepreneur, facing down mobsters and telling Isabella Rossellini that she’s ready to destroy her competitors.
Joy is based loosely on the true story of Joy Mangano, a Long Island housewife who made millions inventing and marketing products like the Miracle Mop and Huggable Hangers. The film marks the third collaboration between Russell, Lawrence, and Cooper, following Silver Linings Playbook (which won Lawrence an Oscar for Best Actress) and American Hustle (which garnered her a nomination for Best Supporting Actress).