J.D. Vance's ‘Hillbilly Elegy' is #4 on Netflix Charts

I predicted this would happen.

Ever since J.D. Vance was announced as Donald Trump’s VP pick, there’s been renewed interest in watching Ron Howard’s big screen adaptation of Vance’s autobiographical novel “Hillbilly Elegy.”

So much so that in just the past two days it’s climbed to #4 on the Netflix TOP 10 . I wouldn’t be surprised if it hits #1 by the end of the week. There’s immense interest in “Hillbilly Elegy” now, with an inordinate number of think-pieces being published about the book and the film.

Released in 2022, “Hillbilly Elegy” was not just critically panned but “greeted with intense online mockery.” It was all overdone. It’s not a strong film, but neither is it a bad one, it’s probably somewhere in between. Filled with stellar performances and a story cooked out of ‘90s American moviemaking, audiences seemed to disagree with the critical assessment of “Hillbilly Elegy” (Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score: 25 percent. Audience score: 83 percent.)

According to Vance’s best friend from Yale, Jamil Jivani, the criticism of the film, which he deemed to be politically motivated and malevolent, was the “last straw” in his “falling-out with elites,” and he would soon start to side more and more with Trump in his political distaste for the “establishment”.

The film, which starred Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Haley Bennet and Gabriel Basso, dealt with Vance’s years as Yale Law student and how one phone call brought him back to his Ohio hometown, where he reflects on three generations of family history and his own future.