Joy – 5

This movie was a test of your appetite for Jennifer Lawrence and her hairstyles: I loved her going in but had seen quite enough by the end. My Robert DeNiro fuse was quite a bit shorter and was exhausted almost from the start: his comic persona didn’t fit a character that wasn’t actually funny. Once more I felt struck by the curse of the “true story”: certain things made no dramatic sense, but since they (or something like them) actually occurred, the screenwriter apparently felt no need to justify them – Joy’s showdown with the Texas patent thief being most prominent. In retrospect, it’s hard to think of a single scene that rang true. It’s sad that the team that made Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle came up so empty this time.