The term "Oscar bait" is flouted about quite often nowadays in reference to the sort of fare that is seemingly made not for anybody’s genuine entertainment, but rather a small circuit of people who deem it worthy of awards. The list of requirements usually feature comments like “true story”, “addiction”, “acclaimed actors”, “family dramas”, but I have always felt that "Oscar bait" is far more specific, for I have seen multiple films with the above headings that are genuinely superb. For me "Oscar bait" is that special brand of feature that has seemingly been constructed to appeal just for awards, and yet fails to create anything worthy of any in every regard. Such as this film fails and such as this film is built around getting Amy Adams and Glen Close their first Oscars. With 13 nominations and zero wins between them, I can vaguely understand why our two female leads of Adams and Close have perhaps moved away from the fare that they usually do superb work and have moved now instead to perform in shoddy wastes of everybody’s time. This film adaptation of J.D Vance’s 2016 New York Times best-selling memoir of the same name is a true blue trash-fire of a film, without as much as an ounce of charm or delicacy in the tale it tells. Hillbilly Elegy is certainly the worst film I have seen thus far this year and is one of the dullest and blandest and shallowest pieces of commercial cinema that I have seen in some time.

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Ron Howard has directed many great films...or has he? I wrote that comment before returning to the full filmography and it's blatantly obvious that the great films are few and far between. With Parenthood being one of the great family comedy drama’s, The Grinch being a very enjoyable Christmas film and Rush being a film I feel many sleep on how good it is. But then it’s just a wave of bland and un-interesting Oscar fare that nobody would ever wish to see more than once. From Cocoon to Backdraft, from A Beautiful Mind to Apollo 13. It is the absolute rarity that Howard directs a film that is wholly stellar. Hillbilly Elegy is another such film, the deeply uninteresting story of J.D Vance returning to his home town to deal with his drug addicted mother following an overdose, intercut with his flashbacks of his turbulent childhood, is told with as little visual flare as possible and is clearly resting on performances that all involved thought were excellent – I’d have to disagree. It's not just that the story is is something we have seen an ungodly amount before, but it's a story that we've seen done far better and that we're even bored of seeing it done well. This is some of the worst work I have ever seen Amy Adams commit to a screen. In this film she is ridiculous, broad and absurd in every scene, there isn’t even the slightest glimpse of the warmth or depth that she manages to convey with even the coldest of characters. She manages to make the character completely resentful and caricature-ish, in every way. We cannot feel for her human plight and the struggles of her addiction, because she quite simply feels like an SNL sketch character. In actuality that isn’t fair, Bill Hader’s Stefon had more depth. Close is the really only performance that I could consider being worthy of a nomination, with a far more nuanced and depthful performance, never once reducing to screaming or intense scene work in some veiled attempt to show range. But still then I can think of six other names off the top of my heads that I much rather have a supporting actress spot.

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Vanessa Taylor’s script for the film relies intensely on what she must have felt were charming witty remarks from the deep south, but instead come off as painfully cringey and just not funny. The few zingers that Close manages to deliver well, really only ever garner a chuckle and much of the laughter actually comes from the absurdly shoddy dramatic scenes. Every cliché in the book is thrown in here, from intense road-side family arguments, to long monologues about “MY LIFE! What about my life!” The exact sort of crap that you’d expect from a film with such a dreadful title. Taylor also shows absolutely no ability to structure a script, with flashbacks serving no purpose being thrown in all about the place and no clear emphasis on character development or plotting. True story or not, a film still has to go somewhere. Many of the most important scenes for our characters, actually happen off-screen. Anything remotely interesting is instead conveyed through a title card prior to the credits. One of the worse scripts I’ve had to sit through in some time. However this isn’t a case where the sub-par material is elevated any, for Howard’s direction is so painfully mediocre. A point of view element is brought in multiple times in the early scenes, as some way to convey the fish out water feeling that J.D feels among the upper classes, but this fades away and never returns. The one sparing moment of inspiration, like the rest of the movements, fades away into the bland wave that washes over this film like a constant tide. This tide too gathers up the music, a bland mixture of the first pop records they could get their hands on (no inspiration again), and the editing, which even has its fair share of truly embarrassing moments, with convoluted attempts to mirror and juxtapose (none of which land in any fashion of success).

But above all, and if nothing else, it’s just so bloody boring. So. Intensely. Bloody. Boring.

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A horrifically bland 3/10, with little to no redeeming features other than Close’s performance, but that's really nothing to write home about either. Howard’s horribly dull direction and the painfully cringe-inducing script from Taylor, and a collection of some of the broadest and worst performances of the year, all lead this farce to be a film I hope to never see again.

P.S. Some months ago I wrote an article about how much I want Amy Adams to win an Oscar. This article has not yet come out, but is scheduled. I assure you, when you read that article – THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANTED!

-Thomas Carruthers