Things get better when Joy hears about a televised way to sell products and makes a connection with QVC. She convinces an executive there, played by Bradley Cooper, to let her appear as herself.

Audiences looking for a rich, textured, cinematic experience will be put off and disconcerted by an image that looks more like an advanced version of high definition television than a traditional movie.

What audiences end up with word-wise is a hackneyed, completely derivative copy of old Hollywood romances, a movie that reeks of phoniness and lacks even minimal originality.

What's most troubling about this witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone-crunching violence is the increasing realization that it actually thinks it's saying something of significance.

Things get better when Joy hears about a televised way to sell products and makes a connection with QVC. She convinces an executive there, played by Bradley Cooper, to let her appear as herself.

Death is supposed to be the great equalizer, but that's never true. Death is random, capricious, unconcerned, a flagrant player of favorites. It keeps its own counsel, so much the better to profoundly shock by its actions.

Baseball endures at least in part because it is a contemplative sport that delights in nuances. Not a brazen game, eager to sell its thrills cheaply, but rather an understated affair that must be courted if its to be loved.