by Shane Conto
Who doesn’t enjoy a good ole Ron Howard picture? Howard has been a mainstay in film/TV since he was a little boy on The Andy Griffith Show. He has also been creating films behind the camera for the past few decades. His films have been known for their workman-like efficiency as well as a genuine heart at the core to them. Have they been criticized for being a bit…mushy? They have indeed and when it comes to most serious and darker themes, they don’t always hit the mark. A film like Parenthood really shines under Howard’s direction. But is Hillbilly Elegy just a rural version of that film? Not quite.
This story is a bit darker and heavier…or at least it should have been.
J.D. Vance told his family’s story in Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis which has now been adapted and will be arriving on Netflix just in time for Thanksgiving. Is this the kind of family entertainment you want to check out with your family? Howard’s film has that same type of sentimentality of most of his films, except it doesn’t quite fit the tone to this film. Not to take away from the directorial efforts of the film but the tone feels all over the place. An American Gothic tone of a Jeff Nichols film would have been much more fitting to a film about drug abuse and domestic abuse. SO much domestic abuse is in this film from so many characters. But the film still tries to be sappy. There are particular scenes that feel incredibly intense and shocking with a mother flooring it in her car and then beating her son as well as J.D. losing his cool and trying to break into a man’s apartment. Those scenes work well, but when contrasted with the sheen of the rest of the film, they feel incredible jarring.
Unfortunately, the screenplay doesn’t do the film many favors either.
Hillbilly Elegy struggles from what I like to call the The Revenant-issue. What do I mean by that? Well it is a narrative issue when you have a film throw so many terrible things at a character that it feels boring and repetitive after a while and just mean-spirited. Hillbilly Elegy suffers the same fate. After a while I just wanted the film to progress but it just spun its wheels for about 100 minutes of its runtime. By the time the film got to a point where the story could move on, the film portrayed it in a quick and unsatisfying montage. The way the story is structured as well feels muddled and messy. Why use the non-linear narrative structure when there feels like there is not progress at all? The film would bounce back between young J.D. dealing with abuse and dysfunction and then come back to the present time and…do the same exact thing. Are some of those scenes along the way more effective than others? That is accurate, but by the end the story felt so overdone.
All of the characters and situations also feel cliched and stereotypical that it feels like the film is taking shots at its own characters and their tragic situation.
There is one particular bright spot of the film that should be praised and that is the two performances that this film will be remembered by. Gabriel Basso as J.D. gives a solid and serviceable performance that works for the film and Haley Bennett gets to show some of her chops, but the real stars are Amy Adams and Glenn Close. Who is surprised? Just based on the poster and the buzz going in, I honestly thought this film was going to be about them. Amy Adams is a wild card in this film as she balances charm with jealousy and anger. She is legitimately scary at times with how intense she can get. Her character can be so vile and Adams surely comes to play and delivers on that. Close plays a hardened woman who has a biting wit about her. Oh boy does Close deliver. The humor works so well and yet there are times where there is a warm light shining through with her relationship with J.D. But don’t let that fool you, she can be stern and commanding as well when he acts poorly.
These two performances really help provide some positives in an otherwise messy and disappointing drama.
But will you be checking out Hillbilly Elegy this Thanksgiving? I think many people will appreciate the easy to digest nature of the film despite the tough subject matter. But others will be let down by the lack of nuance and depth to this film. Melodrama really defines this film and makes Hillbilly Elegy feel closer to a soap opera than a serious drama. The story should deserve a more serious and meaningful approach. But what you get is more atone to a stone skimming across the surface of a deep and vast lake of emotion.
Grade: C-