Hillbilly Elegy

2020

1h 57m

IMDb RATING

6.7/10

997

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Drama

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.

Directors

Ron Howard

Writers

JD Vance(book by)

Vanessa Taylor(writer by)

Stars

Amy Adams

Glenn Close

Gabriel Basso

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Top cast

Beverly "Bev" Vance

Bonnie "Mamaw" Vance

J.D. Vance

Lindsay Vance

Usha Chilukuri

Papaw

Young J.D. Vance

Matt

Phillip Roseman

Ken

Travis

Chris

Kevin

Uncle Pat

Uncle Arch

Lori

Jimmy (Bev's Brother)

Nathan Hesse

Bill (Nurse)

Directors

Ron Howard

Writers

JD Vance(book by)

Vanessa Taylor(writer by)

All cast & crew

Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

This is another entry in the wrenching genre of Oprah book club family dysfunction fare. The dysfunction extends through two generations here, plenty of material to mine for lousy parenting and distressing reality show-worthy bad behavior. It is well done I suppose, as you would expect from Ron Howard, but I confess I have a low threshold for this genre and had to force myself to finish it. One bright light was that at least the brother and sister were there fir each other and counterbalanced the antics of Mom and Mamaw. They show the real people at the end of the film, and I was intrigued by how close they tried to have the actors resemble them. But of course the home movies shown were all of positive moments in the family, as filming life’s awful moments blossomed much later with YouTube. So these cheerful videos acted to gloss over the pain and dysfunction the movie had worked so meticulously to represent throughout the two hour film.

narrator5623 Jul, 2021