Movie Breakdown: Hillbilly Elegy

Pre-Screening Stance:

Hillbilly Elegy has all the right parts – it’s based off a best selling memoir, Ron Howard is a competent director, and the cast includes Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Haley Bennett, Freida Pinto and other familiar faces. However, early word on the film hasn’t exactly been positive, so who knows.

Post-Screening Ramble:

Oh no. Since I had heard some not so good things about Hillbilly Elegy, I greatly lowered my expectations heading into it, and yet I still found it to be a rather woeful affair. This is not a film that’s good in any way – it’s over-acted, over-directed, and so poorly assembled that I watched most of it with a bewildered expression strewn across my face. I’m not even entirely sure what the movie was about. It somewhat follows a very angry young man named JD (Gabriel Basso) as he tries to land a summer internship that will either allow him to move to another city with his girlfriend, Usha (Frieda Pinto), or help him complete law school. Or maybe it’s both? Anyhow, his mother, Bev (Amy Adams), overdoses on heroin and that throws a wrench into his plans. It also causes a lot of flashbacks, which throws a wrench directly into your face. Seriously, every moment with young JD (Owen Asztalos) and his family is painful. If it’s not the performances, which all feel like they’re based off SNL-like sketches about hillbillies, it’s the entirely incoherent story that will hurt you and test your patience like few films ever have.

Do not watch Hillbilly Elegy. It’s very bad, and with 2020 already having been super shitty, you don’t need to make it worse for yourself via this disaster.

The film will hit Netflix on November 24.

One Last Thought:

“Because, honey, we’re hill people” is a real line that gets said in this movie. It made me legit laugh out loud when a wild-eyed but stone-faced Glenn Close muttered it, and I believe that it will continue to crack me up for the rest of my life.