☆☆☆☆½
Is Honey Boy the work of an attention-seeking egotist in desperate need of attention to solve his own personal conflicts? Yes. Isn't every work of art?
The film is written by and stars Shia LaBeouf -- an actor who, prior to 2019, held absolutely no appeal for me. It's about a young actor traumatized by his self-destructive father. The actor is named Otis (Noah Jupe, mesmerizing) but is, in fact, LaBeouf himself.
It sounds like a deeply pretentious vanity project. Directed Alma Har'el turns it into anything but. Its specific, precise story is about one person and his pain, yet LaBeouf and Har'el have created a film that is as cathartic for the writer as the audience. Honey Boy contains scenes that hurt to watch, that are delivered with the force of a gut-punch, that shine with an honesty shocking in its clarity, and that are suffused with visual beauty.
LaBeouf plays his own father -- or, more exactly, Otis's father, though I did wonder why the movie is so coy about names as the end-credit sequence is filled with LaBeouf's family photos. Otis's father has absolutely no redeeming values, and his abuse of his son is at least in part what drives an older Otis (Lucas Hedges, ubiquitous yet ever remarkable) to therapy. And it's in therapy that Honey Boy reveals its truths about pain, grief, hurt, memory and the difficulty all of us have in being truthful. Honey Boy feels true, and that is its great, gracious gift.
Viewed Nov. 24, 2019 -- AMC Burbank 16
1500
The film is written by and stars Shia LaBeouf -- an actor who, prior to 2019, held absolutely no appeal for me. It's about a young actor traumatized by his self-destructive father. The actor is named Otis (Noah Jupe, mesmerizing) but is, in fact, LaBeouf himself.
It sounds like a deeply pretentious vanity project. Directed Alma Har'el turns it into anything but. Its specific, precise story is about one person and his pain, yet LaBeouf and Har'el have created a film that is as cathartic for the writer as the audience. Honey Boy contains scenes that hurt to watch, that are delivered with the force of a gut-punch, that shine with an honesty shocking in its clarity, and that are suffused with visual beauty.
LaBeouf plays his own father -- or, more exactly, Otis's father, though I did wonder why the movie is so coy about names as the end-credit sequence is filled with LaBeouf's family photos. Otis's father has absolutely no redeeming values, and his abuse of his son is at least in part what drives an older Otis (Lucas Hedges, ubiquitous yet ever remarkable) to therapy. And it's in therapy that Honey Boy reveals its truths about pain, grief, hurt, memory and the difficulty all of us have in being truthful. Honey Boy feels true, and that is its great, gracious gift.
Viewed Nov. 24, 2019 -- AMC Burbank 16
1500
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