20 Movies Critics HATE But Audiences LOVE

There are few things critics loathe more than badly done Oscar bait, and that's Ron Howard's Hillbilly Elegy to a tee - a woefully clunky, toe-curlingly melodramatic adaptation of JD Vance's novel that feels like it was crafted solely to campaign for awards rather than tell a compelling human story.

Even with firecracker performances from Amy Adams and Glenn Close, this was such a gooey mess as written and directed that it scored just 24% on the critics' Tomatometer, though the audience rating settled at more than triple that figure - a sturdy 81%.

Evidently Hillbilly Elegy is the sort of film that many, many middle-aged folk watched on Netflix because it has Adams and Close in it.

That's a demographic decidedly less likely to be bothered about the story's accusations of "poverty porn," but rather connect with its central family thematic and big, grandstanding performances.

The Academy at least agreed with general viewers in part, given that Close received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance, so there's that.