{"id":109370,"date":"2020-11-10T22:30:05","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T19:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/ron-howard-makes-oscar-bait-film\/"},"modified":"2020-11-10T22:30:05","modified_gmt":"2020-11-10T19:30:05","slug":"ron-howard-makes-oscar-bait-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/ron-howard-makes-oscar-bait-film\/","title":{"rendered":"#Ron Howard Makes Oscar Bait \u2013 \/Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Ron Howard Makes Oscar Bait \u2013 \/Film<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\"hillbilly<\/p>\n

In 2016, J.D. Vance published his memoir\u00a0Hillbilly Elegy<\/em><\/strong>, which became a nationwide sensation after the election of Donald Trump, with media<\/a> pundits scrambling to understand Trump\u2019s influence over the rust belt states, or \u201cTrump country,\u201d as it was dubbed. Four years and one Trump presidential election loss later,\u00a0Ron Howard<\/strong>\u2018s adaptation of\u00a0Hillbilly Elegy<\/em> hits Netflix and the Oscar contender circuit, complete with transformative scenery-chewing performances from Oscar nominees\u00a0Glenn Close<\/strong> and\u00a0Amy Adams<\/strong>. Maybe it was the ill timing, or the blatant Oscar bait, but\u00a0Hillbilly Elegy<\/em> has not been well-received by critics in their recently released reviews.<\/p>\n

See our round-up of\u00a0Hillbilly Elegy<\/em> reviews and early buzz below.<\/p>\n

Before we get to the reviews, here are a few Twitter reactions to\u00a0Hillbilly Elegy<\/em>, which range from vehement dislike to apathy, with some praise for Glenn Close and Amy Adams\u2019 performances.<\/p>\n

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Goes without saying: Amy Adams deserves better than HILLBILLY ELEGY. She’s done a fantastic, empathetic, grounded performance as a working-class woman before \u2026 in THE FIGHTER! So I’m baffled by every scene of hers here playing like it’s the one for her Oscars clip montage. pic.twitter.com\/0phsc9uxX6<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Marshall Shaffer (@media_marshall) November 10, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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HILLBILLY ELEGY: Didn\u2019t care for the movie or performances. Structurally, it\u2019s a mess and on the whole, painfully uninteresting. And I say this as someone who\u2019s a sucker for underdog stories. It\u2019s never a good sign when \u201cWhy should I care?\u201d is what you ask yourself after a film.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Tomris Laffly (@TomiLaffly) November 10, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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sooooo i didn’t hate #HillbillyElegy<\/a>, but i also can’t really defend its existence and its lack of impact. it is extremely middle of the road to forgettable
\n\u2014 Candice Frederick (@ReelTalker) November 10, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Amy Adams and Glenn Close elevate well but #HillbillyElegy<\/a> is just the wrong movie at the wrong time and feels like the cinematic equivalent of “all lives matter” & there are “very fine people on both sides.” J.D. Vance’s story unfolds like a Hallmark channel Sunday morning reel. pic.twitter.com\/gY3jBl1LJd<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Clayton Davis (@AwardsCircuit) November 10, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And now onto the reviews, all of which are fairly negative toward Ron Howard\u2019s Oscar-contending drama.
\nVanity Fair<\/a>\u00a0calls\u00a0Hillbilly Elegy<\/em> \u201cprestige bait that uses an awfully rusty lure, tossed with careless pride from its ship of Hollywood fools,\u201d expanding:<\/p>\n

Like the worst kind of memoir adaptation, every scene in\u00a0Hillbilly Elegy<\/em>\u00a0is an Event. The Day of the Fight, the Day of the Arrest, the Day of the Bad Dinner with the Snooty Lawyer Who Mocks J.D.\u2019s Upbringing. That last scene also happ<\/a>ens to be the same day J.D. finds out that his mother has relapsed and is in the hospital. The film leaves pretty much zero room for anything quotidian, anything usual, which might give the story some kind of subtle human texture, and make the dramatic stuff actually land with the intended impact. It\u2019s all yelling all the time, an exhausting litany of bad moments that renders the family\u2019s story just about meaningless.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Playlist<\/a> wrote that the film \u201cfails as a drama\u201d and is \u201ceven worse as a commentary,\u201d losing even the sociopolitical themes of its original text, J.D. Vance\u2019s memoir of the same name, which blew up in the aftermath of the 2016 election after the media leapt to the \u201cauthentic\u201d depiction of Trump country:<\/p>\n

Based on the memoir of\u00a0self-described\u00a0\u201cnationalist\u201d\u00a0J.D. Vance\u00a0and directed by\u00a0Ron Howard\u00a0with the subtlety of a sledgehammer symphony, \u2018Elegy\u2019 isn\u2019t the worst motion picture of the year (though it\u2019s up \u2013 or down \u2013 there), but it is the most shameless, a naked play for awards and prestige that doesn\u2019t even have the courage of its sketchy source material\u2019s convictions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Vox<\/a> reviewer\u00a0Alissa Wilkinson calls\u00a0Hillbilly Elegy<\/em> \u201cpossibly the worst movie I\u2019ve seen in years,\u201d writing:<\/p>\n

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I am surprised it\u2019s as bad as it is. Written for the screen by Vanessa Taylor (The Shape of Water<\/em>,\u00a0Hope Springs<\/em>) and directed by Ron Howard, it is distractingly Hollywoodified, a rich person\u2019s idea of what it is like to be a poor person, a tone-deaf attempt to assuage a very particular kind of liberal guilt by reifying the very thing that caused the guilt in the first place. And, perhaps worst of all, it\u2019s a very dull movie.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Variety<\/a> praises Amy Adams and Glenn Close\u2019s performances for their \u201cdown-home flamboyance,\u201d but calls\u00a0Hillbilly Elegy<\/em>\u00a0\u201cRon Howard\u2019s otherwise overly safe adaptation\u201d:<\/p>\n

As long as Close is acting up an award-worthy storm (her performance is actually quite meticulous), \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d is never less than alive. Adams does some showpiece acting of her own, but as skillful as her performance is, she never gets us to look at Bev with pity and terror.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Indiewire<\/a> praises \u201can excellent performance from Glenn Close,\u201d but\u00a0writes \u201cthis apolitical adaptation can\u2019t save J.D. Vance\u2019s memoir from its own self-interest.\u201d The review writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d\u00a0is\u00a0\u2014 for better or worse \u2014\u00a0exactly the kind of milquetoast and\u00a0capital-\u201cE\u201d Empathetic\u00a0movie\u00a0you would expect a\u00a0bunch\u00a0of Hollywood liberals to\u00a0make from\u00a0Vance\u2019s\u00a0memoir. The source material has been strip<\/a>ped of its libertarian streak\u00a0(in addition to any other social commentary) and sandblasted into something that more closely resembles a\u00a0shouty\u00a0episode of \u201cThis Is Us\u201d in both structure and tone than it does\u00a0a\u00a0pre-history of the\u00a0Trump\u00a0era\u00a0or a caricature of those who\u00a0capitalized on it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Uproxx<\/a>\u2018s Mike Ryan muses that he doesn\u2019t know \u201cwho\u00a0Hillbilly Elegy<\/em>\u00a0is for. Well, except maybe J.D. Vance.\u201d He writes:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a difference between that, empathizing with someone who is really struggling, and just a blanket \u201cTrump voter.\u201d There are many successful people who are Trump voters. And, at this point, I really don\u2019t care at this point what makes them tick.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In its review, AV Club<\/a> hopes that \u201cHillbilly Elegy [will] mark the end of Trump-era myth-making about the white working class\u201d:<\/p>\n

To give it just a small crumb of credit,\u00a0Hillbilly Elegy<\/em>, the new Ron Howard film based on J.D. Vance\u2019s 2016 memoir of the same name, doesn\u2019t play as an apology for the toxic racism of white America. But like those\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0profiles, it views its subjects as zoo animals, offering the same enduring stereotypes about Appalachia\u2014namely, that it\u2019s full of people too ignorant to realize that they\u2019re being victimized by their own bad choices\u2014peddled by Vance\u2019s book.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>\u00a0was one of the kinder reviews, calling the film \u201csympathetic but less than stirring portrait of hard-bitten lives\u201d:<\/p>\n

Whatever lessons it might want to impart,\u00a0Hillbilly Elegy<\/em>\u00a0doesn\u2019t romanticize its subjects or package their struggles in neat bromides or cornpone redemption. In the late going especially, the director and Basso give a persuasive weight to the friction between family responsibility and personal ambition. There are moments that clang off-key or land with the flatness of clich\u00e9, but there are also sharp observations across the urban-rural divide.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

***<\/p>\n

Hillbilly Elegy<\/em> debuts in select theaters around the country this week ahead of its Netflix streaming debut on\u00a0November 24, 2020.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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