Netflix’s newest original feature, Hillbilly Elegy, is leaving many viewers disappointed and upset with how the movie was done.

Hillbilly Elegy, directed by Ron Howard, stars Gabriel Basso as J.D, Amy Adams as Bev J.D’s mother, and Glenn Close as Mamaw. The movie is an adaptation of J.D Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy, published by Harper-Brothers. Vance’s’s autobiography depicts his impoverished childhood in Middletown, Ohio.

But like most movies based on books, there are differences.

The Netflix film mainly focuses on Vance at a Yale dinner party, where he is trying to impress law firm representatives in order to obtain an internship. As he is already under a lot of stress, paying for law school and feeling out of place at the dinner, he receives an urgent phone call from his sister that brings him back to Middletown. Vance has flashbacks throughout the movie of his early and teenage years, of both the good and the bad.

The movie starts off with Vance riding his bike to a lake in Breathitt, Kentucky with a preacher delivering a message in the background. Right off the bat, the value of family loyalty plays a big role in the movie. Vance’s cousin, grandpa, and uncle come to pick him up and see him getting beat up. They interfere, coming to the boy’s rescue, and one of his family members punches a bully in the stomach.

No matter what situation appears in the young Vance’s path, his grandma, “Mamaw,” and mom trust that family loyalty will overcome any obstacle. The lake scene foreshadows this family belief.

The Netflix original also shows Vance breaking the family cycle of drug abuse and not attending college. He is the first to go to college in his family, enrolling at Ohio State and then Yale Law School. Vance also enlists in the military to help pay for college.

The audience learns in the movie how drugs and alcohol, as well as physical and verbal abuse, played a personal role in the Vance family. Most of the abuse encountered by the young Vance is brought on by his mother. After his grandpa dies, Vance’s mom turns to heavy use of drugs to ease the pain, in turn growing more abusive. In one scene, Vance runs to a stranger’s house to hide from his mother and call the police. Shortly afterwards, however, Mamaw steps in and takes J.D in.

Mamaw plays a huge part in the young Vance’s life. She is a mother figure to him and reliable source of safety and comfort when his mom is abusive and on drugs. The audience learns that Mawmaw is largely responsible for Vance’s later success. In one scene, she shares her only Meals on Wheels dinner with him and makes sure to give him the bigger portion. When Vance begins to appreciate Mawmaw’s generosity and character, he begins to pick up his weight around the house and focusing on his school work. 

Nevertheless, the film’s reception has not been especially positive. Critics argue that the movie is offensive to rural Americans, failing to show an accurate representation of poverty. Critic Adrian Horton said, “Hillbilly Elegy is a bad movie, maybe one of the worst of the year,” and adding that the film “frustratingly replicate a panoply of tropes of (white) Appalachian hillbillies.” Another critic, David Sims, wrote for The Atlantic, “This movie could’ve succeeded as a story about human beings, not cartoons.”

However, despite all the negative reviews, I enjoyed the film. I thought the director cast the story’s roles very well, and all the actors played their roles with passion. Particularly emotional is the end of the end of the movie, where pictures of the actual family are shown, reminding viewers that the heartfelt story is based on a real-life rural American family.