Jennifer Lawrence stars as the titular Joy, whom we meet as a young girl with a head full of interesting ideas on how to make life great.  Real life seemed to squash those early dreams, opting not to go to college despite being the valedictorian of her high school, and then entering in through a short-lived marriage and raising two kids mostly on her own.  Her home life in Long Island is like a kooky sitcom, with a shut-in mother hooked on soaps in one bedroom, a Venezuelan lounge singer ex-husband in her basement, a father who comes to her for a place to stay while his own relationship issues get sorted out, a half-sister who despises everything Joy's about, and a beloved grandmother (the film's narrator) who still believes in her dreams to be better than all of this.