Jennifer Lawrence Gets Tough in First 'Joy' Trailer
After giving Jennifer Lawrence standout parts in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, director David O. Russell hands her the title role in Joy, his upcoming biopic about self-made inventor and infomercial saleswoman Joy Mangano. The film also features Lawrence’s Silver Linings Playbook co-stars Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. Watch the first teaser trailer above.
The real-life Mangano went from struggling single mother to successful entrepreneur when she began hawking her first big invention, the self-wringing Miracle Mop. In the trailer, we see brief inklings of Joy devising the mop, as she inspects the yarn on a doll’s head and sketches out the components. Mostly, though, the trailer fixates on Joy’s journey from obedient Long Island daughter and wife to rebellious, independent businesswoman. (De Niro plays Joy’s father, while Cooper reportedly plays a Home Shopping Network exec.)
There’s more grit and melodrama here than one would expect from story of the woman who invented Huggable Hangers; we see Joy being locked in a jail cell, bashing a wall with a sledgehammer, and angrily firing off a gun. (The over-the-top drama of the trailer occasionally recalls Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper’s last film, the bizarre, straight-to-video period piece Serena.) At the same time, there’s a surreal element to this true story, as is often the case in Russell’s movies, with scenes of Lawrence being showered in fake snow or standing alone in the middle of a forest, that may be taking place in Joy’s mind. One thing’s for sure: When a shotgun-wielding Lawrence says, “My name’s Joy,” she is not messing around.
Joy opens in theaters on Dec. 25.
