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JD Vance’s rust-belt memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” on his family’s story of poverty in the Appalachians, became a bipartisan bestseller in 2016, supposedly because it offered an explanation for who voted for Trump’s presidency. But a quick reaction highlighted the book’s shortcomings: its negative generalizations about Appalachian culture and the advancing narrative that poor people are to blame for their own woes (unlike how Vance’s bootstrapping has leads to success).
Ron Howard is directing Netflix’s adaptation of Vance’s memoir, written by Oscar-nominated scribe Vanessa Taylor “The Shape of Water.” With Amy Adams as Vance’s mother and Glenn Close as her tough grandmother, the inspiring story reeks of Oscar bait. Despite this pedigree, the problems with the original memoir had predisposed critics to approach the film with suspicion, and preliminary reviews were not rave.
Howard’s treatment glosses over some of Vance’s political observations, a mind-boggling choice that provides additional water for the Review Plant. While many critics have approached the panning of “Hillbilly Elegy” with apparent glee, most acknowledge Adams and Close’s far-reaching performances, though even those ratings are divisive.
Checking in at just 27% on Rotten Tomatoes, “Hillbilly Elegy” has very few supporters. Richard Roeper of Chicago Sun-times provides the highest praise, championing the film’s clear ambitions at the Oscars and calling the film “a beautifully constructed, ruthless, and heartbreaking family epic.” He also calls Adams’ performance a “tour de force” and “masterful” from Close.
While the Variety and The Hollywood Reporter trades cover a bit, acknowledging Howard’s lack of nuance, on the whole they seem to forgive the film’s intention even though it’s “safe.” However, most of the reviews aren’t that nice.
Here’s a look at what some of the top critics are saying about “Hillbilly Elegy”:
ROLLING STONE “Hillbilly Elegy” review: Best-selling memoir becomes BS of Oscar season
David Fear’s title leaves no doubt about his opinion. As he nods at the performances, it’s clear that he takes umbrage at the adaptation narrative itself:
“As a result, we now have Ron Howard’s ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, a live render of various cartoonish aspects of Vance’s book striving for the seal of approval for the important statement,” he wrote. “The politically conservative, anti-well-being streak in the author’s writing appears to be surgically suppressed; only the turbulence remains, smothered in syrup (or ‘syrrpp’, a Southern pronunciation that is affectionately mocked here) of seasonal molasses. No one would accuse this adaptation. of owning the libs or bending to a base. It’s simply a poverty class cosplay, a pantomime of what people derisively call the triumph and tragedy of the “white trash” sold as a prestigious drama.
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VOX: Everything About Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy Movie Is Horrible
Alissa Wilkinson calls the film “perhaps the worst movie I have seen in years”, “surprisingly terrible” and “strangely disgusting”.
One of the biggest criticisms, however, is that Howard’s adaptation rings false and even lacks the convictions of Vance’s memoir.
“She’s a distracting Hollywood woman, a rich person’s idea of what it’s like to be a poor person, a tone-deaf attempt to appease a very particular kind of liberal guilt by reifying what caused guilt in the first place. And, maybe worst of all, it’s a very dull movie. “
She also dares to criticize the actresses’ performances as “oddly theatrical, as if they were to end up in Perform, with a capital P, like strange creatures they had never met before. These are not humanizing representations”.
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THE PLAYLIST: Harmful “Hillbilly Elegy” is the most shameless film of the year
Unlike Richard Roeper, Jason Bailey is most offended that the film is a “bare room for awards and prestige”. He also complains: “The dialogue is pure cringe, booming and bogus – lots of striking proclamations like ‘Family is the only thing that means a damn’.”
Not only is he not a fan of the cartoonish turns of the stars, but he notes that Adams’s performance is so desperate that he pleads: ” [the Oscar] to her, for God’s sake, so that she can start doing interesting work again. “
And just in case his position isn’t clear, he ends with, “What an absolute pitcher of crap.”
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VANITY LOUNGE: “Hillbilly Elegy” is shameless Oscar bait
Ah, no more anger at the film’s lack of shame! Richard Lawson calls it “both a mindless cosplay and a failure to question one of the book’s controversial innuendos.”
One of the recurring themes in many reviews is how each scene is an overloaded event.
“The film leaves virtually no room for everything that is everyday, all the usual, which could give the story a kind of subtle human texture, and make the dramatic stuff really land with the expected impact. Everything screams all the time, an exhausting litany of bad times that makes the family story pretty much meaningless. “
Close’s performance is considered “obscenity” and “all sinister calculations are masked as empathy”.
In short: “It’s a prestige bait that uses a terribly rusty decoy, thrown with reckless pride from its Hollywood booby boat.”
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WASHINGTON POST: “Hillbilly Elegy” is almost ridiculously bad – if it weren’t so melodramatic
Critic Michael O’Sullivan also notes that every event is overworked in this “mystifying film adaptation” of memoir.
However, the apolitical nature of the film is seen as its biggest failure.
“[The film] avoids theories – more prominent in the book – that might help explain the opioid epidemic and the seemingly unbreakable cycle of poverty that defies simplistic solutions (but that might lead people to seek deliverance from a political stranger ). The problem is, in doing so, the movie leaves us, like JD’s family, with only a bunch of rude excuses for bad behavior. “
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THE WRAP: “Hillbilly Elegy” Movie Review: Ron Howard’s Rust Belt Saga is Yokel Hokum
The biggest problem with the adaptation, according to critic Alonso Duralde, is that it plays
“Like an informal ad for JD Vance,” with a similar lack of understanding of what perpetuates poverty.
“These people are not poor because American companies have shut down the local manufacturing industry and sent the jobs to more easily exploited foreign workers; they are not ignorant because Ronald Reagan and his spiritual heirs starved public education; there is no opioid crisis in this country because the Sackler family got rich by flooding the market with OxyContin – those poor people just stopped trying, ”he writes.
Hollywood elitism is the lens through which this film is made and viewed, “a sinister look into the lives of the less fortunate so that more privileged audiences feel as though they have experienced something genuine, whatever either a bologna fried sandwich or washing and reusing plastic cutlery. “
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TIME OUT: Are you hosting a vendetta against your eyeballs? Ron Howard’s Turgescent, Overloaded Rust Belt Drama is Here to Help
Phil De Semlyen calls this both a “movie preacher pudding” and a “weak sauce”.
Leaving the culinary metaphors behind, the film “finally comes along feeling more like a misjudged and staggering exercise in the heart of Hollywood mourning America. Not that.”
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INDIEWIRE: “Hillbilly Elegy” review: Ron Howard adapts controversial JD Vance memoir into forgettable Netflix biopic
David Ehrlich acknowledges that the film’s aspirations are “for better or for worse – exactly the kind of empathetic milquetoast and capital” E “movie you’d expect a bunch of Hollywood liberals to make from Vance’s memoir. Source material has been stripped of its libertarian streak (in addition to any other social commentary) and sandblasted into something more like a garish episode of “ This Is Us ” in both structure and tone that ‘to a prehistory of the Trump era or a caricature of those who capitalized on it. “
Ultimately, however, he cites a failure that appears to be worse than any missed opportunities in messaging or excessive acting:
“It won’t spark any controversy, ignite the minimum number of pieces of thought required at the moment (most of which will focus on the value of such a bland” purple “film at the height of our red / blue division), and win a party favor Some will feel seen, others will feel dispensed from taking a closer look, and most will feel nothing.
“Hillbilly Elegy” is available to stream on Netflix starting Tuesday, November 24.
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