Movie Review: "Joy"

Joy (2015)

R

3.5 Stars out of 5

Director                                David O. Russell
Writer                                   David O. Russell
Music                                    David Campbell, West Dylan Thorsden
Cinematography                 Linus Sandgren

Jennifer Lawrence             Joy
Robert DeNiro                   Rudy, Dad
Bradley Cooper                 Neil Walker
Edgar Ramirez                   Tony, ex-husband
Diane Ladd                         Mimi, Nana
Virginia Madsen                Terry, Mom
Isabella Rosselini              Trudy, “step-mom”
Dascha Polanco                 Jackie, friend
Elizabeth Rohm                 Peggy, sister
Susan Lucci                         Danica, soap opera star
Melissa Rivers                    Joan Rivers
Jimmy Jean-Louis              Toussaint

 

2015’s “Joy” is a fictionalized account of the rise to wealth and power experienced by Joy Mangano during the 90’s. She was then a young divorced mother of three working as an airline reservations manager. Her invention of a self-wringing mop, the “Miracle Mop” started Mangano on her road to becoming a self-made millionaire. However, it was not just her inventiveness (she has over 100 patents), but it also her drive, business acumen, and association with QVC and later HSN that enabled her transition from suburban Long Island to her own mansion and business empire. In writer/director David O. Russell’s hands, “Joy” becomes a kind of modern Cinderella story complete with evil half-sister, evil quasi-step mother, and a heroine that begins her rags to riches transition with a mop. It is unfortunately and despite a scintillating performance by Jennifer Lawrence as Joy, an inconsistently told story that weaves from a “Fargo-like” surrealistic brand of humor to straight-forward drama.

“Joy” begins with a soap opera dialog in the background. This melodrama starring soap opera veterans Susan Lucci and Donna Mills will make several appearances during the first half of “Joy” with its over-the-top version of reality providing their own version of a Greek Chorus to Joy’s daily travails. And travails, she does have. Her mother, Terry (Virginia Madsen) lives in her bed watching the aforementioned soap opera doing her best to hide from the world and its presumably too harsh reality. Joy’s daughter, Christy will join her Nana in bed providing an example of childish acceptance and love. Joy’s own Nana is Mimi (Diane Ladd) and like Christy will play the role of one of the few people in this movie (other than Joy and her life-long friend, Jackie played by Dascha Polanco) with her feet firmly on the ground. Unfortunately, Russell has decided in his script to augment the soap opera counterpoint to the primary narrative with actual narrator, Mimi. Remarkably, Russell does not find even this sufficient as he will bring in an endless series of pop tunes that were chosen to also highlight some aspect of Joy’s story – the music is truly unrelenting in its intrusiveness, no matter how carefully chosen to complement the primary story.

As odd as Terry is a mother, Joy has an even stranger individual as a father, Rudy (Robert De Niro). De Niro in his all too frequent role as movie clown plays Rudy as a seriously self-centered, failed father to Joy. He will do his best along with Joy’s sister, Peggy (Elizabeth Rohm) to step on as many of Joy’s dreams as they possibly can. Rudy will do it with a false sense of apology as he tries to take the “blame” for deceiving Joy into believing too firmly in her dreams, even as he makes it plain, that it is Joy’s own inadequacies that lead into the various failures she encounters on her way to success. Peggy adopts a more familiar role, that of jealous and competitive sister to Joy. Peggy really wants Rudy’s approval and see’s Joy’s early successes at invention as a direct challenge to her own sense of self-worth.

We first meet Rudy in manic over-drive as he argues with Terry and manages to destroy a shelf full of crockery in the process. Following this fight, which Joy had watched helpless to stop, and as her own daughter cringed in the kitchen from the pseudo violence, Joy takes Rudy back in to her home and ensconces him in the basement where Joy’s own ex-husband, Tony (Edgar Ramirez) lives – even though he and Joy are two years divorced. Needless to say Rudy and Tony hate each other; something they make immediately clear to the viewer. All of these characters (with the exception of Mimi and Christy) are cardboard cartoons of characters living out cartoon versions of sitcom comedy in Joy’s house.

Russell’s script seems to intend to create a comic atmosphere of a very put-upon Joy. She is the only working member of the household besides her father (he owns a very loud auto-body repair shop located right next to an even louder gun range). She cleans up after everyone, most notably her mother who consistently clogs up the plumbing with her hair which leads to plumbing problems. Into this maelstrom will enter two more characters: Toussaint (Jimmy Jean-Louis), a Haitian plumber come to fix Terry’s plumbing and win her heart; and Trudy (Isabelle Rosselini) come to become Rudy’s fourth wife and Joy’s reluctant investor.

Joy will need an investor. She will be inspired following one more mess she must clean up to invent her miracle mop. Trudy a well-off widow will supply some of the cash along with a second mortgage on Joy’s home to get the Miracle-Mop into manufacture along with covering some unforeseen legal problems. The legal problems will come from the company building Joy’s mop hardware and will provide yet one more villain/obstacle for Joy to overcome. However, before that last hurdle must be jumped, Joy needs to find a customer base for her mops. Into the story comes Bradley Cooper as Neil Walker, head of sales at QVC.

In order for Joy to meet Neil, to get her mop on QVC, and to be successful with her mop on QVC, Joy will again have to prove her stubborn desire to succeed. She will run the corporate gauntlet at QVC (with some help from the suddenly useful Tony) to meet Neil, convince him of the mop’s value, and then of her own value as a salesperson. And here is where Joy as an individual really shines. She is not just an inventor, she is also a consummate television salesperson/personality; the movie version amps up her success in terms of initial sales of her mops. However, the reality of Joy Mangano’s actual salesmanship is astonishing: she currently routinely sells over $1M per hour on HSN, and is in fact HSN’s most successful salesperson with annual sales over $150M per year.

The issue with “Joy” is neither Lawrence’s performance nor Joy as a character; it is not the camera-work which at times is spot on; the problem is the writing/directing efforts of Russell. The movie feels like such a missed opportunity. Joy Mangano’s story is a compelling and inspiring one. Why Russell lost control over the movie’s pacing and tone in the first half is a mystery. By the time Joy meets Neil, the movie finally seems to gain its footing. The film moves from the wild swings of comedy, simple drama and surrealism (e.g. as Joy dreams at one point, she enters into the soap opera as a character),  and far too many intrusions from Nana as narrator and the various pop tunes into a serious drama about a woman determined to get her mop made and sold. There are nice touches of realism as Joy moves through an entire day with a large food stain on her blouse, nice touches of sentimentality as we see young Joy working on her early inventions, and serious scenes where Joy’s great promise as a teen was loss due to one more pull on her from her self-centered parents (their divorce in this case, which required Joy to give up college in order to come home and run the household). And especially in the movie’s second half there is great camera-work as the camera comes close with Joy’s face framed by the background and the viewer gets an up close view of Lawrence’s considerable acting talents via her subtle facial movements. There is even a fairly cool foreshadowing of Joy coming out of her cocoon of 17 years (just like the cicada’s in the book she read to Christy) in order to leave the airline and to become a business-woman. Why the crazy tone and pace changes? They simply detract from the other fine elements in this story.

Bottom-line, “Joy” is worth seeing for Lawrence’s acting alone, but also to learn little about the real Joy. Her story is inspiring and worth seeing, even in a flawed vehicle like “Joy” the movie. I recommend this movie but with reservations.

Book and Movie Review: Divergent

Divergent (Book: 2011; Movie: 2014)

Book: Four Stars out of Five

Author: Virginia Roth

Movie: Three Stars out of Five

             Director: Neil Burger

             Screenplay: Evan Daugherty, Vanessa Taylor

It is always a pleasure for me to compare an author’s vision for her book to that of the director’s and screenwriters’ version in a movie. The easiest comparison is a case such as Cloud Atlas where both the movie and the book were brilliant. Even more enjoyable are those few cases where a dreadful book is turned into a work of genius; my favorite example of this is The Bridges of Madison County. Unfortunately the most common transition is from a very good book being turned into something quite mediocre. This is what has happened in the case of Virginia Roth’s Divergent.

Roth has created in her 2011 book, “Divergent” a compelling story that is well crafted technically and thematically. Following a current trend in Young Adult fiction, Roth has placed her story of sixteen year old Beatrice Prior in a post-apocalyptic vision of the future. By means only vaguely described, humanity has separated into five factions; the five factions represent five strengths found in Human nature: kindness (Amity faction), truthfulness (Candor), selflessness (Abnegation), intelligence (Erudite), and bravery (Dauntless). The unlikelihood that Humanity could so separate by either sociological or biological means following a devastating  war is somewhat beside the point in this novel as the separation provides Roth with opportunities to explore the strengths and weaknesses of each behavioral trait. One point she makes via a good use of foreshadowing is that each faction felt that the cause of the war was an insufficiency of their particular’s faction’s strength in those that waged the war. The seeds of factional distrust are there to be readily seen; so much so, one wonders how the separation into factions was ever thought to be a good idea.

The story follows Beatrice, now renamed Tris after she has left her childhood faction of Abnegation to join and train with Dauntless. That she finds and falls in love with a young man (known as Four) should come as no surprise to the reader; or that while she is initially the lowest ranked of the new initiates into the Dauntless ranks, that by training’s end, she is the highest ranked. Like so many YA stories, the familiar traits of bravery, intelligence, and selflessness help Tris to stand out in the face of her physical limitations and a small coterie of bullies. Another frequent theme in YA fiction is the value of a loving family or the corrosive effects of a dysfunctional one. While Tris finds special strengths in the memories of her family, Four’s upbringing provides a stark contrast as his memories of a controlling and abusive father always loom in his thoughts and actions.

Four’s problems from his childhood are cleverly revealed to Tris and the reader via a plot device. This device or McGuffin is a chemically induced simulation of one’s deepest fears.  McGuffin or no, I actually enjoyed its use in both the book and the movie (its use was actually the technical highlight of an otherwise flawed movie). The simulations allow the reader to much better understand who Four is and how he came to be; it also allows Tris an opportunity to grow as a person as she experiences Four’s fears and to help him overcome them. It is a plot device, but it really helps to propel the story along in terms of both the story’s primary arc as well as to also help describe the budding romance between the main characters.

Having developed into a highly capable new member of Dauntless and to have publicly displayed her affection for Four, the story starts what will presumably be the initial stages of the concluding parts to Roth’s Divergent trilogy. On the morning following her graduation into the member ranks of Dauntless, Tris discovers that her new comrades are all behaving in a highly robotic manner. She blends in with them as she searches for Four. They do indeed find one another as well as the destination and intent of their robotic mates. As they further search for an explanation of the other Dauntless members behavior they learn of the secret plot and methods now being employed by one of the rival factions against Tris’ childhood faction. She seeks out her parents and brother in an attempt to warn them and by the book’s end, we find Tris, Four and the various survivors on their way into the hinterlands and book two of the trilogy.

For a debut effort, Roth has in her first year out of college constructed a very good novel. It is aimed at the YA readership but adults can certainly read it with enjoyment as well. Roth has invented an unlikely scenario with the five faction idea and then employed an equally unlikely plot device in the form of the serum used to induce what are essentially controlled and monitored hallucinations. However, I think that such scene settings and plot devices can be acceptable if they are used to good effect. In the case of the book Divergent, Roth has indeed used them to good effect. She explores very effectively the idea of personality strengths and deficits, but also how some personality traits though named and presumed different can in fact be very similar. Her primary example of how bravery in defense of another is really just another name for selflessness is one such example; presumably there will be more such examples in the succeeding books. Roth has shown how such discussions on behavior and their sociological outcomes can be both entertaining and enlightening.

Having praised the book, I turn now to the movie. It was, in short, a disappointment. One could compare it to its cinematic cousin, Mockingjay, Part 1 or to its literary antecedent, the book just discussed. In either comparison, the movie Divergent fails to deliver. The book’s strengths lie in the exploration of human strengths, primarily bravery and selflessness. To illustrate these themes the books delves deeply into the characters, their fears, their strengths, and their weaknesses. The book is able to demonstrate how and what Tris took from her childhood experiences with her mom and dad. Both the movie and the book show the fears that Tris carries as a young adult, but in the movie unlike the book, there is virtually no character definition made. The reader has a clear and firm grasp on where Tris is strong, where she is weak and to whom she must turn for help. But movie viewer is exposed to these fears more as hurdles for Tris to face and conquer; their relationship to her actual nature or to how they have shaped her is completely non-existent.

The movie does utilize the simulations of Tris’ fears very well from a cinematic/technical view. The fear simulations are well executed and create a great set of visual images. But like so many CGI images, they just don’t provide much more than eye candy. The performances of Tris by Shailene Woodley and of Four by Theo James are quite frankly of the same nature; both actors are very attractive, and reasonably proficient in their roles, but there just doesn't seem to be much more than their surface appearance. The director’s control and construction of each scene is perfectly fine, but somewhere between the translation from the book or from the screenplay to the screen, too much of the heart and soul from the book is lost. What’s left is little more than an outline of the ideas that the book presents, and the movie fails to follow up on.

Movie Review: Blue Jasmine

Blue Jasmine

2013

Drama

3.5 Stars out of 5

Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine was both a disappointment and a pleasure. The story line lacks any sense of subtlety or depth, but the bravura performance by Cate Blanchett in the title role of Jasmine is more than reason enough to watch this movie. Writer/director Allen has created a story to mirror “A Streetcar Named Desire” by exploring the aftereffects of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. He creates a parallel to Blanche DuBois’ mental problems by imagining the fiscal and mental disintegration of a Madoff-like wife in the form of Jasmine. Additionally he contrasts the glamorous rise and disastrous fall of Jasmine to her far more pedestrian, adopted sister, Ginger. As noted, there are strong parallels to the 1947 play by Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”, though Blue Jasmine stands on its own.

The movie is essentially a character study, with little story arc to propel it. Jasmine channels the high society Blanche DuBois from “Streetcar” as Sally Hawkins plays her blue collar sister Ginger/Stella to great effect. Ginger’s boyfriend Chili/Stanley (well sort of a Stanley) is played by Bobby Cannavale. As in “Streetcar”, the two sisters come from very different worlds: high society for Jasmine, blue collar for Ginger. In a similar manner Jasmine and Chili are immediately at odds with one another, though the Chili character lacks much of the animal-like sexual magnetism of Stanley. In both cases, the Jasmine/Blanche character is devolving into a state of serious mental disarray. And in a similar fashion, the Ginger/Stella character does her best (and despite the endless criticism from Jasmine) to defend and support her big sister.

The key similarity though is the mental disintegration going on with Jasmine/Blanche. Blanchett plays her flawlessly as she moves from talking to herself in public, to haranguing her younger sister for her lack of self-respect, to trying to destroy Ginger’s one vague hope that exists in the form of Chili, to finding a new husband for herself, and back to talking to herself in public. Jasmine appears to be living constantly on the edge of a complete and perhaps irreversible mental breakdown. The final camera shots of her on a park bench gives the impression she has finally moved past that edge; Jasmine is now doomed to a life on the streets as one more homeless, crazed and hopeless street person.

The story is based on various contrasts: the fabulously rich Jasmine married to the schemer Hal (Alec Baldwin) vs. the delusional homeless person; the carefully dressed (at least at the movie’s beginning, much less so by the end) Jasmine vs. her plain Jane sister, Ginger; the crafty scheming Jasmine as she closes in a new beau, Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard) vs. the shortly thereafter scene of her in a state of complete disassociation on the park bench. So many moods and motivations make for a rich playing field by Blanchett, and she makes great work of it; a well-earned Oscar award for best actress.

There is great acting by Blanchett,  good acting by Hawkins, even fairly good acting by Andrew Dice Clay as Gingers ex-husband, Augie and some unusual casting with Louis CK as Ginger’s back-up boyfriend. But the story itself lacks the emotional crescendo and impact of “Streetcar” even as it seems to take so much of its early storyline. This is a fairly good story with great acting, worth seeing for Blanchett’s acting alone.

Television Review: True Detective - Season One

True Detective

Season One

2014

Drama/Crime

3.5 stars out of 5

In 1899, Joseph Conrad published “Heart of Darkness”. This seminal book excels in language (all the more amazing when you explore Conrad’s personal history), but it exceeds almost all other books in describing a literary motif and metaphor that has become a near standard for serious writing in English language fiction: the physical and spiritual core of evil. Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 “Apocalypse Now” may be the best use of Conrad’s metaphor, but True Detective, Season One makes good use of it, too.

In the full season 1 story arc of True Detective, we are exposed to a crime, criminals and a crime scene that seem designed by program creator/writer Nic Pizzolato to evoke the basest actions humans are capable of, and to do it in the midst of the swamp-like interior of various Louisiana bayeux. The season-long arc makes typical use of the Three Act Play: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Although in True Detective, we watch Detective gets partner, Detective loses partner, Detective gets partner back (and solves crime) – not exactly original, but entertaining.

As noted in my review below for episode one, our Detectives are superbly played by Matthew McConaughey as Rust Cohle, and in a very mediocre fashion by Woody Harrelson as Marty Hart. A woman has been killed, others are missing (and in many cases, not even reported as being missing), and our two heroes are on a quest to find the murderer or murderers. As they dig into the crime, they find evidence that the crime is only part of a series of crimes, and that there is some evidence of a cover-up and of links to people in power. When the apparent leader is finally found, he is living in conditions that are so disgusting, so revolting, it makes one question whether he is even human; he clearly thinks he has evolved upward from such a state.

To Pizzolato’s credit, he has introduced (or re-introduced, if you want to consider the Marquis de Sade amongst others) the idea that there is a kind of ethno-centricity to pain and murder. That is to say, murder with a purpose is crime to some, but an act of art/religion/what-exactly to others? The person central to the crimes in this story is living in what to outsiders seems a nightmare, but to him, is the last stair-step to his vision of Heaven. Pizzolato adds further to the complexity and the horror of the crime by suggesting as some Eastern religions also assert that time is circular. We’ve all been here before, we’ll be here again; and worse, the crimes and sufferings of the past will come to haunt us once again. These are complex thoughts for a crime drama.

The program can be watched and enjoyed by adults for the depiction and resolution of the basic crimes, or by anyone interested in the cinematic splendors of the Louisiana backwoods. But, I think this is a rare television story line with deeper undercurrents. They can be read, and perhaps over-interpreted, but it is still fun to look for deeper meaning in a story that is seemingly so prosaic.

True Detective

Season One, Episode One

2014

Drama/Crime

3.0 stars out of 5

When I first learned a Woody Harrelson/Mathew McConaughey crime drama with gothic and perhaps metaphysical elements would be coming out on HBO, I was quite enthusiastic. Working forward in time from Carnivale and Deadwood to the best written program in television history, “The Wire”, HBO has shown they can produce and air drama that is not excelled anywhere, including the silver screen. In this case though, I was disappointed. There is some good acting by McConaughey but there are problems with writing, directing and editing.

Mathew McConaughey as Detective Rust Cohle is very effective playing a severely disconnected but brilliant detective. He is initially taciturn as befits his character’s stereotype, but then starts philosophizing in so thoroughly a misanthropic manner that his partner, Martin Hart must tell him repeatedly to return to his reticence. Hart is played by Woody Harrelson. Harrelson plays Hart in a very inconsistent manner: at first he is morosely mirroring the Cohle character, then he goes upbeat and tries to be Cohle’s friend, later back down again as he tells Cohle to “stop sayin’ odd sh*t”, then up again as a family man that’s worried about Cohle.  At times you can hardly tell the two characters apart, but then depending on script requirements, the Hart character veers off in some new direction. Is this bad acting, bad directing, bad writing or all three – I’m inclined to believe all three. Just consider the simplistic way both characters are named: “Cohle” is the sad, dark character, while the family man who thinks he isn’t also another misanthrope is named “Hart”.

There are multiple technical problems with this first episode. The pacing is the most problematic issue. The pacing drags all too frequently. Camera framing was also a problem, with various angles ranging from good to incomprehensible. Initially, the editing is confusing, but as the rhythm slowly develops, it does become better. The story is told with flashbacks and to some degree this works reasonably well – in fact, it is the best part of the writing.

The basis of this first episode is that Cohle and Hart in flashback mode investigate a gruesome murder of a part-time prostitute (a pross according to True Detective). The clever part is that a similar crime occurs 17 years later, and our two former detectives (now in a completely new incarnation in the case of Cohle) are asked by contemporary detectives to not only help them understand the new crime but help them explain it in the context of the older crime – committed by someone evidently no longer free to re-commit it. Well, that is an interesting premise. And on that note, I will bide my time with respect to this series, and hope that episode 2 and later episodes will improve in quality with respect to the writing and directing.

 

House of Cards, Season Two

House of Cards

Season two

2014

Drama

4.5 stars out of 5

The second season of “House of Cards” continues the story of former congressman/now vice-president Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) and his wife Claire (Robin Wright), and of their no holds barred drive to the top of Washington DC. It is marvelously written, directed, and acted. One of the best TV shows I have ever seen, nearly as well-done as “Breaking Bad” or “The Wire”.

Like Walter White in “Breaking Bad” the story explores just how far a writer can go in terms of creating an anti-hero without losing the interest and sympathy of the viewer. Frank is a non-stop lying, scheming, back-stabbing Vice President in Season Two, episode One. One continually wonders why anyone would trust him or believe him on any topic whatsoever. At yet, he practices his southern charm also on a non-stop basis, and he is able to use this ability plus his cunning to disassemble one administration while covertly building the basis for a successive one.

One very clever aspect of season two is the juxtaposition of Frank with an equally Machiavellian character, billionaire Raymond Tusk (Gerald McRaney). Both men are vying for the attention of and influence over President Garret Walker (Michael Gill). It is the season long story arc as Raymond and Frank contend over the President. Again, it is amazing how this story can maintain interest and concern over Frank and Clair despite their complete lack of morality. It is equally amazing in a problematic sense that President Walker and wife, Trisha (Joanna Going) are so easily influenced by Raymond, Frank and Claire – how on Earth did Walker ever achieve the White House?

There are other plot problems that are all too common to fiction: the convenient overhearing of confidential information, the open shades as two people secretly make love, etc. But really the biggest problem is also paradoxically the show’s most dominant theme: Frank Underwood’s complete and total amorality. He will literally do anything (e.g. Peter Russo’s exit in Season One) to achieve his ends. He will build up and then throw under the bus absolutely anyone to achieve his ends. Are there really people like that running our government? The cynic in me says, yes; but the idealist and movie critic says, it is a little over the top – there appears no law at all that Frank won’t break; I struggle with this a little.

So, where does this all end up? Is this merely a witty and clever story about the world’s worst people climbing to the top of the US government? Is it a Jonathan Swift style parable of how counter-intuitively, the bad do some times win? Or is it a thinly veiled attack on a certain southern former president and his now ascendant wife? I think the story can be viewed and watched, and enjoyed for all of these interpretations; and in my opinion, despite the various plot holes and occasionally pointless and gratuitous sex scenes, most adults will enjoy Season Two even more than Season One.

I’m sitting here wondering where they’ll go in the recently optioned Season three: Frank’s descent into the lowest levels of Dante’s Inferno? As my wife, Sandy commented, Frank has few new directions left to explore.

American Hustle

American Hustle

2013

Drama/Comedy

4.5 stars out of 5

David O. Russell’s “America Hustle” tells an oddly varied story of the Abscam corruption case from the late 1970’s/early 1980’s wherein six US Representatives and one US Senator were convicted of corruption. The story focuses on a fictionalized version of the con-man at the center of the FBI sting (Melvin Weinberg), a fictionalized FBI agent, and two (hopefully) fictionalized women in the con-man’s life.

The con-man, Irving Rosenfeld is played by Christian Bale as an overweight, comb-over loser/anti-hero. Bale walks a tightrope as he shows us Irving succeeding at his various cons but in complete thrall to his Jersey Shore-esque wife Rosalyn played by Jennifer Lawrence. Since it seems that everything that Lawrence does these days, she does at a performance level so far above almost all of her peers, it is no surprise to watch her as she portrays a beautiful but empty-header schemer with complete believability. Irving is smart enough to run or sense a scam on every occasion, while Rosalyn has so fooled herself that she is the smartest person in the room, she inevitably misunderstands almost every scene she is in – sometimes to comic effect, sometimes to disastrous effect.

In stark contrast, the other woman in Irving’s life is Sydney Prosser played exceptionally well (revealingly so) by Amy Adams. This ex-stripper from Albuquerque meets Irving at a pool party and its love/crime at first sight. Sydney via her oddly chosen alternate persona of Lady Edith joins Irving in his scams and ups the ante considerably in their defiance of the law. Eventually, they are trapped by FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) who forces them into helping him with the Abscam sting mentioned above.

The story arc is highly entertaining and waxes and wanes between comedy and drama; it even includes a chilling portrayal of an uncredited cameo by Robert DeNiro as a Florida mobster. But in truth, this is a story of excess during a time of excess in America perpetrated by people lacking in any excesses (wealth, taste, vision) of their own. The quartet of Irving, Rosalyn, Sydney and Richie consist of people that really aren’t fooling anyone, even themselves; they are just faking it. They each are yearning for something more from life (though Rosalyn is too dense to even know what it might be), and each is willing to break any norm, any law to get it.

As I watched the movie I was reminded on several occasions of George Roy Hill’s “The Sting” (1973) starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. In that movie as in “American Hustle” you have lovable anti-heroes trying to scam some truly awful people (whom in Hollywood, I guess it is morally okay to scam), and you know as you watch, there will be a double-scam wherein our heroes get away with it. Oh so Hollywood. But also like The Sting, American Hustle is an outstanding movie well worth watching for the adult level humor; but most especially for Bale, Adams’, and Lawrence’s acting, and for the inevitable coda at the end of the story arc. You want these heroes to get what they want, and well…they do.

This is definitely a movie only for adults. There is an enormous of profanity and some (let’s say) suggestive clothing.