Joy is not a new movie. It was released in 2015, and starring great actors like Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper, and Jennifer Lawrence. Joy, played by Jennifer Lawrence is the main character in the movie whose family always relies on her to fix any and all problems. In the midst of juggling family affairs, Joy is determined to take on a journey of building her own business. The movie is based on true story and real life challenges and obstacles of building a business and making it a success. Actors are at their best with their excellent performance, cinematography is of the top quality, the story is very inspirational.
Spoiler Alert: The movie is ten years old, but is still a great watch today and many years to come. You may have seen it already. If you haven't seen the movie yet, and planning to in the future, please skip reading the rest of the post, as it may contain spoilers.
What is really amazing about humans is out ability to create solutions to various problems we face in our lives. Many brilliant products are result of this ability that any of us posses. Bringing these solutions to the public is the challenging part, which requires much more effort, perseverance, legal and business knowledge, and sometimes luck. Joy has super busy life, raising her young children, taking care of her family, and keeping finances balanced. Joy is also very creative and has been so since her childhood. The product she comes up with is a magic mop that makes cleaning house more efficient. She is determined that this is the best mop and many can benefit from it as well. She takes on a journey of making this product a reality.
Once she made her intentions clear to the family, everybody is very supportive of her, although nobody has a clue how this will become a reality. In any endeavors we take on in life, the support of family and friends is super important, and can make a huge difference. It is one thing to be alone in a journey of pursuing dreams, and completely different and more meaningful when everyone around us is joining in an effort, even if it only means being a passive supporter. This makes Joy's journey even more interesting and relatable for many. After trying retail stores and trying demonstrate how this product is nothing like what currently exist, and failing numerous times, it seems there is no way forward for Joy's dreams to become reality.
As a last effort in bringing this product to many, Joy's ex-husband arranges a meeting with a colleagues from the past who has connections in QVC, a television based household products selling network. When Joy and her ex-husband arrive in QVC studio, it seemed like the meeting was going to be postponed or cancelled. Luckily this doesn't happen, and Joy gets an opportunity to demonstrate her product, although she had no idea who she was making a pitch to. Initially, the presentation doesn't go well. But Joy does her magic and is able to convince the head of the region that this indeed is a right product for QVC. Bought on the idea of magic mop, Neil Walker, played by Bradley Cooper gives a tour of the studio and convinces Joy to manufacture 50,000 units and promises to have his number one salesperson to demo the mop live.
Finally, things start turning in the right direction for Joy and her product. Her family rallies around her, and help to raise the initial funds to manufacture 50,000 mops. When the time to air the product arrived, everybody is gathered by TV and prepare to be amazed. Unfortunately, the number one salesperson does a terrible job demonstrating what the mop does and how it could be beneficial in any household. Total of zero mops were sold. Everybody is so sad in Joy's family. Neil is disappointed as well, but there isn't anything else he can do. This means all money was wasted, and all the efforts were for nothing. Joy doesn't give up. She understands clearly what the problem is. She returns to QVC and demands Neil to make things right and let Joy demonstrate the mop on live TV. Neil is reluctant, but after Joy reminds him how he was convinced in the first place, Neil agrees to give Joy this opportunity.
Joy's debut on TV doesn't go smooth initially. She froze, just like Neil expected. However, things turn around really quick when Joy's best friend calls in the live line asking the right questions about the product. Then everything becomes very easy for Joy to do what she planned to do all along. Just like she convinced Neil first time, she was able to present the magic mop to tens of thousands. Their initial sale reaches 50,000 units. Everyone is impressed. This was the beginning of success for magic mop and Joy. However, it wasn't going to go as smooth as she thought. The biggest challenges were yet to come.
While people are great in creating awesome and useful solutions, there are also people who try to take advantage of business deals. Especially, those who have been dealing in bad faith deals, make the business journey for new inventors miserable. This turned out to be the case for Joy's partners in California who were manufacturing the plastic part of the mops. As the mops became successful and sales were growing, the manufacturing partners decided to keep raising the cost of producing the mops. They raised the price so high that it no longer would be profitable. Not only they were getting greedy and raising the cost for no reason, they also fraudulently made Joy's company pay for royalties that she didn't have to pay. They claimed the patent for the product. It seemed the journey had come to its end, and only option Joy had was to declare bankruptcy and called it quits. But this wasn't Joy. She wasn't going to give up this easy when faced which such bad faith deal.
After doing more research and figuring out who was hiding behind these deals, and how they were involved in fraud, Joy decides to travel to Texas to find the mystery man who was pulling the strings. I am not sure if Joy was bluffing or was determined to engage in legal battles, she was able to convince the Texas man to repay the royalties with interest, pay extra for troubles and sign a document declining all financial claims. Finally, Joy truly was free from fraudulent partners, and her business plan was back on track.
Not only her magic mops became a huge success, Joy was able to create her own company that focused on helping many ordinary people who created products that solved many other problems in our daily lives. Joy remained true to her family, and success didn't change who she is. Her success became a success story for many others who had similar ambitions and similar beginning just like herself.
Joy is definitely a must watch movie. The movie is entertaining, the story is inspirational. There are lessons for all to learn. Importance of family, friends, perseverance against all obstacles are in the forefront of this story, and the movie presents it in a spectacular manner.