Movie Review: Honey Boy

Honey Boy **** / *****

Directed by: Alma Har'el.

Written by: Shia LaBeouf.

Starring: Noah Jupe (Otis - 12), Shia LaBeouf (James Lort), Lucas Hedges (Otis - 22), Byron Bowers (Percy), Laura San Giacomo (Dr. Moreno), FKA Twigs (Shy Girl), Natasha Lyonne (Mom), Maika Monroe (Sandra), Clifton Collins Jr. (Tom), Mario Ponce (Tiny), Martin Starr (Alec), Dorian Brown Pham (Pam), Debra Jones (Mama DJ).

 

There were many ways for Honey Boy to go wrong, and perhaps only this one that it could go right. The film was written by Shia LaBeouf, based on his own childhood as a child actor, supporting his father – an alcoholic war veteran with PTSD and rage problems, who is basically so insecure about the fact that his son supports him instead of the other way around, that he abuses him in one way after another. LaBeouf wrote the screenplay while in rehab – and there are scenes of the adult the child actor would grow up to be, in rehab, full of rage, unable to communicate his own feelings. To make matters more complicated, LaBeouf decided to play his own father in the film, and while he makes the father monstrous, he doesn’t make him a monster. LaBeouf obviously knows this man so well, inside and out, and watching him play the role, you can feel the catharsis LaBeouf must have felt playing it. It’s a remarkable performance.

 

The film was directed by Alma Har’el – her feature debut after mostly making documentaries for the last decade. It’s a great directing job here – apparently, she helped with the story structure, which works wonderfully here. The film’s scene in the present – as the young movie star Otis (Lucas Hedges, great as always) feel real. He plays a man who can now only tap into rage. He’s in rehab because of another DUI – but he isn’t taking it all that seriously – he “acts” because it helps get him out of things. He doesn’t like when his therapist (Laura San Giacomo – nice to see her again) says he has PTSD. What does he have trauma from he wants to know?

 

The flashback sequences – in the early/mid 1990s with the younger Otis (Noah Jupe – remarkable) show us. These scenes have a dreamlike haze to them – as if they’re part memory, part reality, part dream, part nightmare. At times, we flash to the sets Otis is working on – low rent productions at first, but they get higher and higher as the film moves along. This is contrasted to the small space Otis and his father James live in – basically a one room, run down place – where the neighbors are sex workers, and everyone is drinking all the time. Everybody buy James, of course. He has four years sober, he’ll have you know, and everything he does, he does for this boy. But Otis is in an odd situation – the close confines are too much, he and James are always in each other’s space, and James is prone to fits of rage. James talks – constantly – and is liable to fly into one of those rages if he is pushed or challenged in any way. And Otis is the only one making money – James is technically his employee – his chaperone on set – and only gets paid because of Otis. And who else would hire a felon – especially a sex offender – if not for Otis. James was also a performer of some sort at one point – and he’s jealous of his son getting to do what he couldn’t. We hear from the mother on the phone sometimes – but never see her. For James, the fact that she has an another job shows how little faith she has in Otis. He’s all in.

 

Honey Boy is really about just how far James is going to push Otis – how much he can take before he snaps. There is no real parenting going on here – James lets Otis smoke, doesn’t seem to mind much when he hangs out with prostitutes (to be fair, the scenes between Otis and FKA Twigs, as the prostitute, are tender and sweet – and never cross over to creepy – at least quite). He’ll leave at home all night, or not be on set with him in the day. And if you push him, he will lash out – either in violence, or mockery. He won’t even hold his sons hand when anyone else is around. Given what we see of Otis at 12, we aren’t surprised to see him a decade later – a bundle of rage and addiction.

 

LaBeouf has always been a fine actor, although perhaps finding stardom in things like the Transformers films (which he’s clearly filming at the beginning of this film) and the Indiana Jones movie wasn’t best for him. As he’s aged, he’s become more of a character actor – and it fits him better. He clearly still struggles – but in Honey Boy, he’s done something remarkable as both a writer and performer, delving into his own past, and his fathers, to find something deep and dark, but not getting lost in it. With a lot of help from expert collaborators like Jupe, Hedges and Har’el, it makes Honey Boy much more than a standard issue coming of age film or the cliché riddled, exercise in self-pity it so clearly could have become.