Hillbilly Elegy (2020)
Directed by Ron Howard
An urgent phone call pulls a Yale Law student back to his Ohio hometown, where he reflects on three generations of family history and his own future.
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Adapted from J.D. Vance’s memoir of the same name, with a star-laden cast and a story concerning an unlikely protagonist overcoming a meager, turbulent environment, the Ohio-set family drama is a throwback to 1990s Oscar bait like Forrest Gump and Scent of a Woman , feel-good stories rendered for inspirational purposes.
The marquee is advertising, in peeling letters, Forrest Gump —another clichéd film about white southern culture.
From the styling to the clumsy script, nothing here seems authentic or heartfelt compared to a film like The Florida Project , which offered a truly sensitive depiction of American poverty.
For the most part, recent movies that have probed the lives of poor and working-class Americans — “The Florida Project,” “Moonlight,” “Lady Bird” — have chosen respectful subtlety and have exposed the unsung beauty of pockets of America.
We could be entering the 2021 Academy Awards season with another Green Book on our hands.
To be frank, this formula should have been a shoo-in, especially after Green Book (somehow) won Best Picture in 2019.
I wasn't offended by the film—the early comparisons to Green Book were off the mark—I was just bored.
Hillbilly Elegy also has the Green Book problems where there’s no such thing really as societal ills or systemic problems.
Sometimes, Howard’s darker efforts work (Apollo 13, Backdraft, or Rebuilding Paradise, his documentary from earlier this year), while other similarly pitched films (the inexplicably lauded A Beautiful Mind, Far and Away, The Missing) land with a thud because he mistakes struggle for entertainment.
Howard poses as a populist filmmaker ( Splash , Parenthood, Apollo 13 , Far and Away , A Beautiful Mind ), but he’s a Hollywood elite who doesn’t know basic humanity — the insight that the Brahmin Satyajit Ray showed in Aparajito (the second film in Ray’s Apu Trilogy), which is the greatest film ever made about how education separates us spiritually — and more deeply than social station.
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Unfortunately, the source material is the source material and much like Spielberg’s Ready Player One , a competent filmmaker can only take something this conceited and facile so far without completely changing the fundamentals of the story itself.
Director Ron Howard and his screenwriter Vanessa Taylor ( The Shape of Water) don’t abandon those shadings.
Adapted by the screenwriter Vanessa Taylor, who cowrote “The Shape of Water,” “Hillbilly Elegy” stares at its screwed-up yokel characters from the outside in, but it’s most comfortable riding along with J.D., who in the book was grappling with his own psychological and emotional legacy, but who in the movie just comes off as a big, bearish, wholesome hunk of good intentions — a young man who’s the soul of decency stuck in a made-for-TV “My mom was a junkie!” melodrama.
J.D. Vance’s bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy” is adapted to rigorous Oscar-bait effect by Oscar-nominee Vanessa Taylor (“The Shape of Water”).
This was the challenge facing director Ron Howard and screenwriter Vanessa Taylor (“The Shape of Water”) in translating J.D. Vance’s best-seller, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Oscar nominee Vanessa Taylor ( The Shape of Water ) penned the screenplay, yet, with its flashbacks and lessons, the story feels too moulded.
Written for the screen by “The Shape of Water” scribe Vanessa Taylor, “Hillbilly Elegy” is — for better or worse — exactly the kind of milquetoast and capital-“E” Empathetic movie you would expect a bunch of Hollywood liberals to make from Vance’s memoir.
Ron Howard, a consummate professional who’s been going at it as a director now for four decades, aims to add to his Oscar-nominated filmography that includes the likes of “Apollo 13,” “Frost/Nixon” “A Beautiful Mind,” “Rush” and “Cinderella Man.”
Even if it would be foolish to expect a director like Ron Howard— who never read a true-life story he couldn’t mine for inspirational uplift, from Apollo 13 to A Beautiful Mind to Rush —to produce an even mildly subversive movie, the extent to which the film buys into Vance’s projected, self-protective image as a troubled yet dutiful defender of his Appalachian birthright is total, and occasionally embarrassing.
Howard won a directing Oscar for the math-genius biopic A Beautiful Mind (2001), though I tend to prefer less lofty endeavors like the Formula One rivalry saga Rush (2013), not to mention the delightful mermaid comedy Splash (1984).
Ron Howard is no stranger to making movies based on true stories, with memorable ones such as Apollo 13 (1995), Cinderella Man (2005) and Rush (2013).
Inspired by J.D. Vance’s New York Times ’ best-selling 2016 memoir, it’s easy to see what attracted director Ron Howard ( Apollo 13 , Rush ) and screenwriter Vanessa Taylor ( Shape of Water ) to the project.
Howard, a filmmaker whose work I often enjoy, has a practiced hand with true-story movies (he directed Apollo 13 , A Beautiful Mind , Cinderella Man , and Rush , among many others).