David O. Russell continues establishing himself as a top name in mainstream prestige fare with Joy, albeit in a different direction compared to his last three features. The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle showed off Russell’s strengths when it came to working with ensembles, whereas Joy prefers to keep its focus on one character. That means a more streamlined narrative compared to, say, American Hustle, although Russell’s own formula since his career’s resurgence is still here, even if it doesn’t cast as wide of a net. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Joy is a rather simple and entertaining film, a biopic of sorts that works best when seen as a strange, unique and slightly true success story.

In a clear case of not fixing what isn’t broken, Russell works with Jennifer Lawrence yet again in her biggest role for him to date. Inspired by the true story of Joy Mangano, inventor of the Miracle Mop and other successful household items, the film starts with Joy (Lawrence) bearing the burden of her needy family. Joy’s mother Terry (Virginia Madsen) stays in bed all day watching soap operas, and her ex-husband Tony (Edgar Ramirez) lives in the basement. Joy’s grandmother Mimi (Diane Ladd) takes care of Joy and Tony’s two children while she works whatever jobs she can to pay the bills, including helping out the business run by her father Rudy (Robert De Niro) and half-sister Peggy (Elisabeth Rohm). On top of all this, Joy can’t shake her own disappointment in not pursuing her dreams of inventing.

It’s only when Rudy starts dating the wealthy Trudy (Isabella Rossellini) that Joy seizes on the opportunity to see her idea of the Miracle Mop through. It’s in this early section of the film that Russell leans on the familial elements that made The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook so successful. Joy’s family oscillates between being a support and a weight for her, with their individual idiosyncrasies either providing a funny narrative detour or an obstacle to Joy achieving her goals. Russell sometimes likes to start a new scene with only Joy before bringing in her family to overpower the proceedings (at one point Russell frames a meeting between Joy and Trudy as a one-on-one before revealing her friends and family surrounding them in the same room). Russell never goes so far as to paint Joy’s immediate family as villains in the story, understanding the complexities of blood relations. For instance: when Joy complains about needing a good sleep, her family’s response is to feed her a bottle of children’s cough syrup while she lays down on the stairs. They’re not malicious people so much as their best intentions do more harm than good.

The specificity of Joy’s family and experiences goes a long way to helping Russell establish that Joy should not be taken as some sort of symbol for the American dream in action. At first blush, Mangano’s tale does come across as an ideal example of working hard to make one’s own success, but in this film’s reality (Russell embellishes a lot of facts, and not enough is publicly known about Mangano to know just how accurate some of the film’s events are) it’s too bizarre and specific to be taken that way. It’s only when Joy winds up at QVC that a station executive (Bradley Cooper, acting like Russell called him in as a favour to take advantage of his and Lawrence’s on-screen chemistry) starts hammering home the virtues of America as a land of opportunity. The fact that these themes get delivered around artificial sets within giant, empty spaces is probably not a coincidence.

If anything, Russell’s film is more of a celebration of individual resolve. Joy faces constant rejection over her ideas, but she never doubts her own instincts about her mop having the potential to be successful. Russell’s script vindicates Joy through a simple and clever move: the narrative always advances because of a decision Joy makes on her own. Her decision to use Trudy as an investor gets the mop made, her decision to go on TV to sell the Miracle Mop herself gets people to buy it in record numbers, and in the film’s anticlimactic final act—an attempt at a climactic confrontation that fizzles out as quickly as it’s introduced—Joy’s acting entirely on her own. Still, watching Lawrence (who turns in another great performance, although her youth gets the best of her in a clunky flash forward) seize control of her dreams from the hands of those trying to pilfer off of them is fun to watch, and Russell’s unwavering commitment to highlighting her self-earned achievements make it all the more effective.

When A-listers assemble for a film that hardly seems viable on paper let alone delivering anything of worth on-screen, one has to wonder what the inside joke is. The paycheck couldn’t have been that enticing for an indie drama-comedy and with a first time director, Anna Mastro, and a cloying script adapted from a first-time short by Paul Shoulberg, there was certainly no real muscle enticing the likes of William H. Macy, Virginia Madsen, and sleeper-celebs Neve Campbell and Peter Facinelli. So while the actual logistics around a production of this sort elude me, the evidence of Walter’s thinly-lined plot, actively unfunny premise, and reaching sentimentality are abundant.

Walter is the tale of Walter (spoiler alert), an uptight young man (Andrew J. West) who lives an organized and calculated life as indicated by the three alarms he uses to wake up in the morning, his eyes popping open before they even begin to chime. His robot—I mean mother (Virginia Madsen)—leaves his freshly pressed shirt for him next to his door every morning and cooks him eggs for every meal, constantly bemoaning the dangers of starvation. As for his father, well, Walter is the son of God. Not THE son of God, that beardy one, just another son of God. And as such, Walter has been gifted with the ability to judge. (An ability I’d heretofore thought everyone possessed.) Walter’s judgements are simple: “heaven” or “hell.”

To supply him with a steady stream of people to judge, Walter works in the local multiplex tearing tickets. Joined by douche-bag Vince (Milo Ventimiglia), who pokes fun of Walter’s slightly Asperger-ish ways, and the beautiful—and clearly heaven-bound—Kendall (Leven Rambin) who works in concessions. Jim Gaffigan is sorely underutilized as their always-annoyed manager Corey. Not only does Walter busy himself tearing tickets and muttering eternal condemnation on his unsuspecting patrons, but he’s also the shy-movie-lover type, spending his breaks inside the theaters watching whatever is on. This particular trait leads to many a movie-reel style flashback wherein we learn Walter’s father (Peter Facinelli) died when he was young. A sad, broken, father-less introvert who lives a controlled life to the point of deciding the after-life fate of every stranger he sees sounds like the most open and close psych case out there.

And indeed, Walter does eventually find himself a therapist (William H. Macy) when his organized life is put into tail-spin by the appearance of someone new. Greg the Ghost (Justin Kirk). Not quite as friendly as Casper, but at least not decomposing, and stuck in a sort of limbo awaiting judgement for the past ten years. How he knows to track down Walter the Judger we don’t know, but Walter is none too pleased to be asked to pass judgement on someone already dead. Apparently his gift only works on the living. Greg won’t take no for an answer and as he drags Walter around showing him the life he left behind, strange connections to Walter’s own life start to become transparent.

From there the film quickly dissolves into a goopy mess, abandoning its comedic sensibilities altogether and attempting to insert heightened emotion with some long-winded dramatically-tense scenes between Walter and his mother, and Walter and his therapist. Unfortunately Walter is entirely too stiff to care much for by this point and his revelations align in cookie cutter patterns that are entirely too convenient. Everyone responds appropriately, right down to dream-girl-Kendall being open to all-new-Walter in that way that only scripted dream-girls can be.

Walter wishes it were quirky, a word I’ve come to despise and lesser indies seem to aspire to. But if “weird” is what Walter is going for, it doesn’t even reach that. Mostly it’s a strange concept, that actually falls into totally plausible categories and develops exactly the way you’d think. It’s unbalanced in its intent, failing to push hard enough with its comedy and pushing too hard with its drama. As a simple look into the world of a young man on the cusp—I’m not joking, they even use the same “Hero” song we’ve all grown to associate with Boyhood during one scene—it’s simply not moving, nor enlightening. If they’d thrown God into the mix, or even provided any sort of explanation for Walter’s gift and how it works, than the actual “weirdness” of the film might have been interesting, but alas these areas go entirely undeveloped.

Macy and Madsen are always on their game, but this game is about as fun to watch as solitaire. West (his most recent memorable role being leader of a cannibalistic tribe on The Walking Dead) is straight with his awkward and emotionally stunted character to the point of detachment, but I won’t place the blame entirely on his shoulders. It’s often the case when a short film is translated to feature-length that the filler ends up being more of what already existed, which only makes for too much of what was previously just enough. Walter is a stretched out short with some A-list talent but not enough sense to hold it afloat. Perhaps its time for indie comedies to stop aspiring to “quirky” and start aspiring to well-developed and less gimmicky.

Walter gets a limited theatrical release Friday, March 13.