Critics trash ‘Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy’
Thanksgiving week brings many traditions. In show business, this season is when movies are released for Oscar consideration. Over the past two years, it has been the time that Netflix has streamed Oscar-hopeful epics after a brief theatrical release. In 2018, it introduced “Roma” on Nov. 21, and last year it premiered “The Irishman” on Nov. 27.
Starting today, Netflix streams “Hillbilly Elegy,” directed by Ron Howard. The film is adapted from a best-selling 2016 memoir by J.D. Vance, a book that many felt explained the feelings of heartland Americans beset by the decline of local industries and the hollowing out of their hometowns, overwhelmed by drug addiction. After the 2016 election, some felt that “Elegy” explained the disenchantment of working-class Appalachian whites in ways that “coastal media elites” could not understand. Others countered that Vance, a Yale-educated Wall Street venture capitalist, had become as coastal and elite as they come.
The film stars Glenn Close and Amy Adams. Both are known as Oscar also-rans. Close (seven nominations) and Adams (six) have never carried off a statuette.
If reviews are any indication, they may have to wait. Since the film’s Nov. 11 theatrical release, it has received generally negative reviews. Some of them are scathing.
The Rotten Tomatoes site sums the film up as “bland melodrama.” The A.V. Club thought it “reinforces the stereotypes it is supposed to be illuminating.” “Everything About ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Is Awful” opined Vox. And that was just the headline!
Vox critic Alissa Wilkinson goes on to write, (in her very first line!) that it is “possibly the worst movie I’ve seen in years.”
I’m not sure a Ron Howard movie has been so shellacked since he and Jim Carrey desecrated “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” way back in 2000. Come to think of it, in 2009, he also turned Dan Brown’s ridiculous but thoroughly readable novel “Angels & Demons” (10:10 p.m., TMC) into a bore.
As I hope I’ve made clear, I have not seen “Hillbilly Elegy,” as it was
released as a movie and not as mere “television.” Now that it can be streamed on Netflix, we can all make up our own minds.
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OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
› “The Voice” (8 p.m., NBC, TV-PG).
› A robot traveler’s last moments on “Cosmos: Possible Worlds” (8 p.m., Fox, TV-PG).