There is a lot negative to be said about the book, no question. The movie takes a step away from that, in that it lacks a lot of the author's subtext and just tells the story in a more visual way. JD Vance is almost certainly using his personal story, with he as the hero, for his personal gain. The story itself, which is a story steeped in poverty, domestic violence, and addiction, is something a lot of people can relate to, even if the story isn't particularly sympathetically told.
A girl from rural Kentucky grows up dirt poor with a father who drinks when there isn't money for food, and beats his wife when he is drunk. She lacks the resources to get away, maybe even beleiving what she says long down the road, that family is everything. Her daughter gets pregnant in high school and for whatever reason has the baby. Her family does not help her--this seems to be soemthing that they agree happened--and her resentment at her circumstances leaves her bitter and vulnerable. She seeks love in all the wrong places, and she doesn't place her children above all else. That is the part of family is everything that both she and her mother never learned. Glen Close and Amy Adams are spectacularly convincing as mother and daughter, and the influence that drugs in general and opiates specifically can hold over a person is very realistically depicted. There are no ideas here on how to reverse the winds of fortune in either the blue collar towns who have lost manufacturing or the rural towns that lack running water and cell phone reception. Really the only solution that is hinted at is birth control for teenagers to at least give them a fighting chance.
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