As busy I get from time to time, I find that I can't see every movie under the sun, leaving my friends and colleagues to fill in the blanks for me.  As poetically as I think I wax about movies on this website as a wannabe critic, there are other experts out there.  Sometimes, it inspires me to see the movie too and get back to being my circle's go-to movie guy.  Sometimes, they save me $9 and you 800+ words of blathering.  In a new review series, I'm opening my site to friend submissions for guest movie reviews.

TODAY’S CRITIC: Lafronda Stumn

Lafronda Stumn is a student at Madisonville Community College and intends to graduate with an Associate's degree in Associate of the Arts. She plans on earning a Bachelors Degree in Motion Picture Studies and English at Wright State University. Her favorite Directors are Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Spike Lee, and her favorite actors are Al Pacino, Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, and Halle Berry. Lafronda contacted this page looking for a place to get published and I enjoy giving people that very kind of opportunity. This is her 21st guest review for Every Movie Has a Lesson. Welcome as always, Lafronda!

HER REVIEW: Hillbilly Elegy

Ron Howard is one of the most diverse directors working right now. He has done comedy (Night Shift, Parenthood), drama (A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon), fantasy (Willow), and action (Rush, Backdraft). This time Howard does drama again with the movie Hillbilly Elegy, which unfortunately misses the mark as a narrative about the horror of the opioid crisis affecting one of the leading characters and the family dealing with the crises.

The movie is based on a book by J.D. Vance. A script by Vanessa Taylor details Vance’s issues with his mother Bev (Amy Adams), her heroin addiction, and how his sister Lindsay (Hailey Bennet), his grandparents (Glenn Close, Bo Hopkins) deal with Bev’s downward spiral. 

The film begins with JD as a student at Yale Law who has to go back to Middletown, Ohio where his sister Lindsey asks him to come back after their mother Bev relapses to addiction. Flashbacks are incorporated when JD is around 13 to show when Bev's addiction begins and how JD and his grandparents enable his daughter's behavior.

Several bad scenes stand out including a character in the film being set on fire by Maw maw’s (Close) character. Bev who gets fired from her job as a registered nurse. Bev asks JD to take a urine test to keep her nursing license. Another one earlier is a weird sequence when Bev gets fired after roller-skating at the hospital. Bev screams to the top of her lungs in front of her family and in front of everyone withdrawing from heroin. Bev's character physically assaults JD. The police arrive to ask JD if his mother abused him.

The screenplay by Taylor is a mess. Scenes of Bev’s addiction are disorganized and disjointed with no strong narrative. There are just scenes of Bev's after-effects from her addiction. There is no explanation as to how Adam's character got hooked on drugs in the first place. Adams's performance grates on one nerves. You don't care about her character and you feel that she needs to take responsibility for her actions. Furtheromore, Close’s character takes way too long to do something about JD who was around 13 at the time to see that Adam's character has no business of being a caretaker.

Despite all this, Close’s character of Maw Maw is a good performance. Gabriel Basso and Owen Osztalos are also effective as the older and younger JD. Frieda Pinto plays the college lady friend of JD’s and she is wasted as the concerned girlfriend. A fine actress like Pinto should get better roles for the talent that was displayed in Slumdog Millionaire and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  The performances are not enough to save this debacle of a movie. Hillbilly Elegy is one of the worst films of last year.

CONCLUSION

Thank you again, Lafronda! You are welcome anytime. Friends, if you see a movie that I don't see and want to be featured on my website, hit up my website's Facebook page and you can be my next GUEST CRITIC!