Honey Boy

The story behind Honey Boy sounds like the plot of an indie feature: A young Hollywood actor, known for his self-destructive, self-indulgent behavior, is sent to rehab where, as therapy, he writes a screenplay about his troubled childhood with an alcoholic and abusive father who, his own show business aspirations thwarted, pushed his son into the white-hot spotlight in order to support a fragile family.

Somehow, this bit of therapy gets realized, with the actor playing his own father and a beautiful young woman, hot music-video auteur, commercial artist and documentarian making her first foray into feature film directing.

Maybe it winds up with the actor and the director nominated for Academy Awards. Since this is a gritty indie movie, maybe neither of them wins, but they turn down an offer to reboot the Transformer franchise in favor of making more heartfelt, honest films that resonate with the sort of moviegoers who feel alienated by corporate tentpole projects.

But the thing is, Shia LaBeouf's Honey Boy isn't the embarrassing, slobbering mess you might expect it to be, given its provenance. It is an honestly affecting experience, a modest but sharply observed meditation on broken families and the damage handed down through generations. It is also at least part gimmick, a meta-fiction made from the most painful and personal stuff. It's a fascinating celebrity ouroboros, a snake that eats its own tail.

But more than that, it is tenderly acted and beautifully shot. Director Alma Ha'rel (2011's Bombay Beach), handles the potentially lurid material with subtlety and surprising warmth.

It begins in 2005, with an actor we'll come to know as Otis (Lucas Hedges) staring into the camera, pleading "No, no, no, no, no!" There's an explosion, and he's thrown back into a fireball. The camera holds its gaze until the smoke clears and grips emerge with fire extinguishers; one helps the harnessed Otis back into position so he might be blown away again. Take two.

Then the movie jumps through a quick-cut montage of disturbing images we take to be Otis' memories: A young boy rides on the back of a man moving through a tunnel as a camera crew films them, Otis is continually slammed against the hoods of police cars, there's glass shattering, Otis pulls a version of the "Do you know who I am?" card as he's being locked up in a cell.

So who is he? "An egomaniac with an inferiority complex," he tells Dr. Moreno (Laura San Giacomo), after he lands in a court-ordered rehab situation. Moreno reminds him if he walks away he'll end up serving four years in prison. Then she informs him he's exhibiting signs of post-traumatic stress syndrome. "From what?" he asks.

In answer, we flash back to 1995 where 12-year-old Otis (Noah Jupe), harnessed similarly to his older self, awaiting not an explosion but a pie in the face. (LaBeouf starred in the Disney sitcom Even Stevens from 2000 to 2003.)

Otis, we find out, lives in a downmarket motel with his father, James (LaBeouf), a former rodeo clown and recovering alcoholic who lives off his son's sitcom per diem and furnishes him with cigarettes he's instructed to smoke in the bathroom, lest people think he's a bad father.

The film then begins to toggle between adult Otis' rehab and searing memories of when he was living with his father in that crummy motel.

LaBeouf's James is a remarkably damaged and dangerous creature, four years sober but consumed by repressed rage. He's self-aware of his cruelty and abuse but also a genuine cheerleader for his sweet and perhaps genuinely talented son. He's still going to meetings, but they don't always work. There's a lot of shame as well as hubris in him, and he hates himself for resenting his son's talent. And he's also the product of a dysfunctional upbringing.

Still, the standout performance belongs to Jupe, recently seen in Ford v Ferrari, who will break your heart as the worldly yet guileless child on the screen, the son of the broken boy in rehab who understands that we all lie for a living, that we are acting, all the time. (And we can't help but be aware that we're watching a child actor play an exploited child actor and wonder what sort of risk might be inherent in the undertaking.)

Honey Boy is not more than it was meant to be, a cathartic means to a palliative end. We hope it helps. On the other hand, while it hits a few obvious notes (and maybe a couple of wrong ones), it is, for the most part, specific and vividly realized. There are few movies that feel as honest, and as genuinely brave, as this one.

MovieStyle on 12/06/2019