Grade: 3.5/5
Genre: Drama
Ages: 18+
Even though this film didn’t receive the accolades and reception Ron Howard (the director) had hoped for – I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Based on J.D. Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy”, the movie is set in Middletown, a small town in Ohio about a boy (JD) who grows up in a “white” bubble surrounded by a devoted yet extremely dysfunctional lower class family. JD’s mental acuity and hard work ethic (enforced upon him while living with his grandmother “Mamaw” played brilliantly Glenn Close) – eventually pays off and he ends up attending Yale Law School where he tries to transform himself into a decent citizen, get a job to support himself and his family. In the process, he finds a love interest in Usha (Freida Pinto), an Indian American studying at Yale Law. As he is preparing for an interview at a law firm for a summer job, JD’s life takes an abrupt turn after receiving an SOS call from home about his mother Bev (Amy Adams) suffering from heroin overdose. JD does return home to stabilize the situation as he has now become the de facto head of the family. Amy Adams masterfully plays JD’s mom – showing her vast range of acting ability from the hysterical and abusive to the loving and comforting. Dynamics of the entire family when JD comes back home is the crux of the movie and it does not disappoint.
