To be fair, I haven’t read the book yet (but I definitely will), but by all indications, the book is far superior to Opie, aka Ron Howard’s, pathetic attempt to document rural Appalachia America. You all know the narrative – only Black Lives matter. So, the notion that there exist poor white people, well, yeah, but they must be privileged too and certainly we can’t make them anything but losers. Well JD with the help of his grandmother is anything but a loser. Without stealing too much from the plot, let’s just say JD rises from poverty and a rather dysfunctional environment to go to Yale Law and write a bestselling memoir.
Perhaps the problem with the movie is that it’s hard to turn a memoir into a great movie. It would require a master film maker and great screenwriter. I used to think Opie Howard was one of the best. Now I am pretty sure he’s not. But one thing for sure, the pedestrian slow moving first hour should be burned and forgotten. No offense to Amy Adams, but about a dozen near death overdoses actually gets boring after a while. But then the movie begins when Glenn Close, the grandmother takes over JD’s life, and you see JD come around. It’s a universal story. Probably happens in literally thousands of homes all over the world. The parents either have to work too many hours or as in this case the mother is an addict and can’t provide a stable home, so a relative, often grandparents, step in and saves the child. I suspect even our last president Hussein got a bit of a boost by having grandparents raise him in Hawaii and allow him to attend elite private schools and somehow manage to help him get into Ivy league schools.
By all accounts, the book is a great story well told. The movie – fast forward to the last hour and watch Glenn Close save this movie. One star for the movie. No stars for the screenwriter. Five stars for Glenn Close.