*My review of Honey Boy was originally published on Film Inquiry. Click here to read the original post and check out more great reviews from this awesome site!*
The tumultuous life of controversial actor Shia LaBeouf gets the cinematic treatment in Honey Boy, which jumps between the star’s abuse-riddled childhood and his reflective stint in rehab. Like many of this year’s festival selections, it’s a tough, sometimes painful film to endure, serving as another family drama rooted in the destructive relationship between a father and a son. However, Honey Boy charts an opposite trajectory — where films like Waves and Sorry We Missed You track the downward spiral of familial relationships, director Alma Har’el‘s narrative debut focuses on reconciliation. Running just 93 minutes (mercifully, the shortest film I saw at 919) and unsuccessfully juggling a catharsis across two time periods, this is indeed a somewhat modest work. Yet slight as it may be, Honey Boy is honest and emotionally potent — and that’s an asset that should never be undervalued.
Rising star Noah Jupe (best known for A Quiet Place and Wonder) plays Otis, a pre-teen stand-in for LaBeouf. Otis is a child actor, performing in silly projects in order to provide for his broken family. His home life is anything but pleasant — his father, a former rodeo clown named James Lort (LaBeouf, playing his own dad), is emotionally and physically abusive, struggling so intensely with his own problems that he doesn’t know how to be a good father. Otis and James live in a downtrodden apartment, where verbal abuse and sudden arguments are a daily occurrence.
Young Otis’ life in the late 1990s is framed as a memory from the perspective of an older Otis (played by Lucas Hedges); now in his 20s and on a path to complete self-destruction, Otis is facing a choice between rehab and jail. When his therapist tells him that he has numerous signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, Otis is in denial. But as he digs back into his past, recovering memories that he tried hard to forget, Otis slowly finds a way to move on from the pain and the rocky relationships that have haunted him since childhood.
Honey Boy tells an incredibly personal story in great detail, and its specificity is both liberating and myopic. By limiting its scope in such a disciplined way—with the exception of the scenes of adult Otis in rehab, the film almost plays as a two-hander between Jupe and LaBeouf — Har’el‘s film depicts the full scope of this minefield of a father-son bond. Like many of this year’s brutally emotional family dramas, Honey Boy is in-your-face and frequently showy, with a number of moments designed to elicit a physical reaction.
But while LaBeouf, through Otis, starkly revisits the trauma and cruelty inflicted by his father and the irresponsible parenting that may have led him down dark roads, the film impressively captures the full scope of the relationship: the bright spots amid the horror. While LaBeouf‘s performance as James Lort is often deliberately grating and unlikable, the film smartly develops his own traumatic past, tracking the pain that travels from generation to generation. It’s no excuse for belittling and abusing his only son, but it makes Lort’s actions all the more heartbreaking.
Though Honey Boy‘s ultimate destination is a touch less overwhelming than one would expect (perhaps I was on emotional overload at this point in the festival), Har’el‘s expressive, gorgeous filmmaking frequently elevates the experience. So many quiet moments in Otis’ life are depicted with such tenderness—a loving embrace with a neighbor (FKA Twigs), an emotional, dreamlike reunion — that it’s difficult not to be moved Buried underneath the violence and the anger, Honey Boy‘s affection and warmth make it a worthy journey.
The tumultuous life of controversial actor Shia LaBeouf gets the cinematic treatment in Honey Boy, which jumps between the star’s abuse-riddled childhood and his reflective stint in rehab. Like many of this year’s festival selections, it’s a tough, sometimes painful film to endure, serving as another family drama rooted in the destructive relationship between a father and a son. However, Honey Boy charts an opposite trajectory — where films like Waves and Sorry We Missed You track the downward spiral of familial relationships, director Alma Har’el‘s narrative debut focuses on reconciliation. Running just 93 minutes (mercifully, the shortest film I saw at 919) and unsuccessfully juggling a catharsis across two time periods, this is indeed a somewhat modest work. Yet slight as it may be, Honey Boy is honest and emotionally potent — and that’s an asset that should never be undervalued.
Rising star Noah Jupe (best known for A Quiet Place and Wonder) plays Otis, a pre-teen stand-in for LaBeouf. Otis is a child actor, performing in silly projects in order to provide for his broken family. His home life is anything but pleasant — his father, a former rodeo clown named James Lort (LaBeouf, playing his own dad), is emotionally and physically abusive, struggling so intensely with his own problems that he doesn’t know how to be a good father. Otis and James live in a downtrodden apartment, where verbal abuse and sudden arguments are a daily occurrence.
Young Otis’ life in the late 1990s is framed as a memory from the perspective of an older Otis (played by Lucas Hedges); now in his 20s and on a path to complete self-destruction, Otis is facing a choice between rehab and jail. When his therapist tells him that he has numerous signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, Otis is in denial. But as he digs back into his past, recovering memories that he tried hard to forget, Otis slowly finds a way to move on from the pain and the rocky relationships that have haunted him since childhood.
Honey Boy tells an incredibly personal story in great detail, and its specificity is both liberating and myopic. By limiting its scope in such a disciplined way—with the exception of the scenes of adult Otis in rehab, the film almost plays as a two-hander between Jupe and LaBeouf — Har’el‘s film depicts the full scope of this minefield of a father-son bond. Like many of this year’s brutally emotional family dramas, Honey Boy is in-your-face and frequently showy, with a number of moments designed to elicit a physical reaction.
But while LaBeouf, through Otis, starkly revisits the trauma and cruelty inflicted by his father and the irresponsible parenting that may have led him down dark roads, the film impressively captures the full scope of the relationship: the bright spots amid the horror. While LaBeouf‘s performance as James Lort is often deliberately grating and unlikable, the film smartly develops his own traumatic past, tracking the pain that travels from generation to generation. It’s no excuse for belittling and abusing his only son, but it makes Lort’s actions all the more heartbreaking.
Though Honey Boy‘s ultimate destination is a touch less overwhelming than one would expect (perhaps I was on emotional overload at this point in the festival), Har’el‘s expressive, gorgeous filmmaking frequently elevates the experience. So many quiet moments in Otis’ life are depicted with such tenderness—a loving embrace with a neighbor (FKA Twigs), an emotional, dreamlike reunion — that it’s difficult not to be moved Buried underneath the violence and the anger, Honey Boy‘s affection and warmth make it a worthy journey.
THE FINAL GRADE: B (7.1/10)
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