Ron Howard's 'Hillbilly Elegy' is based on J.D. But the movie, starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close, isn't a beat-for-beat adaptation. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is a 2016 memoir by J. Vance about the Appalachian values of his Kentucky family and their relation to the social problems of his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, where his mother's parents moved when they were young.

In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck. The Vance family story began with hope in postwar America. J.D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the. Hillbilly Elegy, the highly-anticipated film adaptation of J.D. Vance's bestselling memoir, received mixed reviews upon release, to put it mildly, with critics on Rotten Tomatoes giving it a score of just 27 percent. Ron Howard is back with his latest film, Hillbilly Elegy. The 66-year-old director has previously helmed the likes of Rush, Apollo 1 3, A Beautiful Mind, The Da Vinci Code, How the Grinch Stole.

“Hillbilly Elegy,” Ron Howard’s film based on J.D. Vance’s memoir, is one of those movies that comes with a built-in audience — a built-in audience of haters, ready to pounce without having seen it.

My advice: Watch the movie first. Then hate it, if you like. But you might not. Maybe not because of what Howard puts in his film (which includes actor’s actor performances from Amy Adams and Glenn Close) but for what he leaves out.

Vance’s book (like the trailer of the film when it was released) has been scorched for the author projecting his own experience growing up in a family with an Appalachian legacy mired in addiction and abuse — he eventually makes it to Ohio State University and Yale Law School — onto an entire culture, offering dubious insight into why poor, uneducated white people supported Donald Trump. (The full name of the book is “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.”)

Ron Howard solves some of the book's problems by leaving them out

Howard solved the potential problem of fueling hate-watchers’ fire about the socioeconomic musings on personal responsibility and such the easy way:

He leaves them out.

Instead he focuses on the personal story of J.D., played as a boy by Owen Asztalos, then by Gabriel Basso. J.D. grew up in Ohio, but at the start of the movie he’s visiting family in Kentucky. When some local boys bully him, they get a taste of how close-knit the Vance family can be.

Three women figure prominently in J.D.’s life: his mother, Bev (Adams, mostly decked out in overall shorts and a frizzy wig); Mamaw, his grandmother (Close, in an even frizzier wig, owl glasses and a cigarette constantly dangling from her mouth); and Lindsay (Haley Bennett), his older sister.

They share a genuine love for one another, but there are problems, the worst of which is Bev’s addiction. She’s a nurse, but as addiction overtakes her she begins making the poor decisions you’d expect. These include, but are not limited to, unfortunate choices in men.

J.D. reminisces on this while at law school. His girlfriend and classmate Usha (Freida Pinto) is supportive, but J.D. keeps her at a distance when it comes to his family — literally, when she volunteers to accompany him on an emergency visit.

The social observations in Vance's book are mostly left out

This comes at the absolute most inopportune time. J.D. has just slogged his way through a fancy dinner with lawyers at a high-powered firm where he's hoping to intern. He’s frustrated because he doesn’t know what the extra forks are for (he calls Usha for help) and he feels out of place and put upon. It is impossible to watch this and not think, dude, a nice dinner is not an attempt to humiliate you. Just eat.

But he’s simmering and he speaks his mind to one of the partners and is sure he’s blown his shot. That’s about as much heavy-handed cultural criticism as Howard includes in the film, and it’s not very effective. (Lindsay at one point tells him not to use his family as an excuse to fail, but it’s delivered more as a personal command, not an overarching societal observation.)

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During dinner J.D. gets a call: His mother has overdosed. Can he please come home? Right now?

So he drives home and, wouldn’t you know it, while he’s trying to get his mother’s hospital bills sorted out (she has let the insurance lapse) the firm calls. Could he come for a personal interview? Tomorrow morning?

Meanwhile, through more flashbacks, we learn of the hard road J.D. has been forced to take. Bev is out of control for large chunks of his childhood and teen years. After a particularly ugly incident he moves in with Mamaw, who is a salt-of-the-earth, tough-love sort of person. (Papaw, played by Bo Hopkins, has a lighter touch.)

The story's pretty standard. Amy Adams and Glenn Close's acting is not

So in effect this is a pretty standard overcoming-adversity story, particularly with the more politically oriented social observations removed. What isn’t standard is the acting. Neither Adams nor Close, both such gifted actors, have won an Academy Award. Their performances suggest that Howard might have reminded them of this every time he was about to call, “Action!”

Both are ferocious, in different ways. Adams digs into the troubled and, even to those who love them, often maddening life of an addict and leaves behind any hint of the charm we often see in her characters. Giselle from “Enchanted,” this ain’t.

Close’s performance is one of slower, sustained intensity. If Bev behaves like her frizzy hair is on fire, Mamaw steadily faces down the problems in front of her. And if you are one of those problems, you probably would do well to get out of the way.

“Hillbilly Elegy” ultimately is not the movie a lot of people thought it would be. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing, you’ll have to decide after you’ve seen it.

'Hillbilly Elegy,' 3.5 stars

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

Director: Ron Howard.

Cast: Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Gabriel Basso.

Lindsay Vance Hillbilly Elegy Book

Rating: R for language throughout, drug content and some violence.

Note: In some theaters Nov. 13. Streams on Netflix Nov. 24.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

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Lindsay Vance Hillbilly Elegy

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why Ron Howard's 'Hillbilly Elegy' isn't the movie you think it will be