Donald Trump’s running mate in his campaign for US president is the subject of a controversial Netflix film that the platform hoped would be a well-regarded Oscar hopeful – before it was critically savaged.
The movie, developed from 39-year-old JD Vance’s own memoir, may have been a glossy Netflix original film stuffed with stars and helmed by a legendary director.
But Hillbilly Elegy was slated as one of the worst movies of 2020, and sits on a miserable 25% Rotten Tomatoes score.
However, just hours after Trump announced that Vance was his pick as the Republican nominee for Vice President, the film shot up the streaming platform’s charts in the US to number six.
Vance is an Iraq veteran and self-proclaimed ‘hillbilly’, who grew up in poverty in America’s Rust Belt before attending Yale Law School and later working as a venture capitalist.
He became a senator for Ohio in 2022, the first to serve for the state without previous government experience in nearly 50 years.
The memoir he published about his deprived upbringing in rural Ohio in 2016 is called Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis and was an instant hit.
The New York Times bestseller covered his troubled childhood, marred by poverty, abuse and his mother’s drug addiction, with the politician and his sister mainly raised by his grandmother and grandfather – who also struggled with alcoholism.
They had moved from the Appalachian region, one of the poorest in the United States.
Netflix leapt on purchasing the popular book’s rights in 2019, reportedly paying $45 million for them, according to Deadline.
Award-winning director Ron Howard, who claimed Oscars for his work on A Beautiful Mind – as well as nominations for Frost/Nixon – joined the movie, which was adapted for the screen by The Shape of Water’s best screenplay Oscar nominee Vanessa Taylor.
The cast was led by Amy Adams as Vance’s mother Bev and Glenn Close as his grandmother Mawmaw, both esteemed actresses and multiple-time Oscar nominees.
Gabriel Basso, best known for Netflix series The Night Agent played the older Vance and Owen Asztalos the younger version, supported by Freida Pinto, Haley Bennett and Bo Hopkins.
However, despite the promise of the material, cast and creatives, Hillbilly Elegy was poorly received with Inside Hook asking bluntly in its review: ‘Why did Amy Adams and Glenn Close choose to do such a bad movie?’
It was also panned for unintentionally being ‘the most laughable movie of 2020’, ‘flavourless’ and ‘one of the worst movies of the year’.
‘It’s a prestige slog, full of flat, sneering caricatures,’ complained The Observer in its two-star review, while Entertainment Weekly observed: ‘Howard thinks he’s making an inspirational tale. He doesn’t realise it’s an American horror story.’
The Independent also described it as ‘a sickeningly irresponsible parade of death and despair’ in its one-star drubbing.
Hillbilly Elegy did manage to score two Oscar nominations nonetheless, for make-up and hairstyling and for Close as best supporting actress – her eighth Academy Award nod (with no wins) so far.
However, she also got a Razzie nomination for it too.
Audiences were also more split in their view on the film, with some proclaiming it ‘awful’ and saying they could ‘not even finish it’, while others raved about it, dubbing it ‘heartwarming’ and ‘inspiring’.
Viewership of Hillbilly Elegy also increased by a staggering 1,179% on Netflix compared to the day before Vance’s bid to become VP was announced, according to research from Luminate.
It was watched for 19.2 million minutes on Monday compared to just 1.5 million minutes on Sunday.
‘This is an excellent biopic. A great story of determination and overcoming obstacles to succeed,’ enthused Steve W on Rotten Tomatoes, adding to the review aggregator’s audience score of an impressive 82% with his five-star rating.
‘I guess if you want to know if a movie will be good or not you should look at the critics reviews. The lower the score the better the movie and this movie is wonderful,’ sniped Greg C, referring to the vast difference of opinion.
‘Glen Close was very good and the rest of the actors were awesome. Great story, good message and a wonderful look inside the life of JD Vance.’
Today, Vance is just a matter of steps from one of the greatest positions of power in the world.
He had initially been a vocal critic of Trump – dubbing him ‘America’s Hitler’ – before later changing his tune and receiving the former president’s official endorsement when he ran for senate.
Vance’s politics are controversial, with him anti-abortion – even in the case of incest or rape – as well as a sceptic of aid to Ukraine and a doubter of climate change.
He has also introduced bills to withhold federal funds for colleges where there have been encampments and protests against the war in Gaza and referred to the UK as a ‘truly Islamist country’ following Labour’s election victory.