A Boy And His Dad [HONEY BOY Film Review]

Imagine a hyper-real documentary crossed with a fractured fairy tale where the subject matter is the effects of wayward fathering on impressionable youth. That’s Honey Boy in a nutshell and it’s heavy.
Director Alma Har’el, working from a script by Shia LaBeouf, manages to blur the lines between reality and embellished memories just enough to give our tale of dominance and submission some startling visual oomph. The end result is ostensibly LaBeouf’s origin story, albeit delivered in layered flashbacks which waver between dreamlike austerity and nightmarish indulgence.
Based on LaBeouf’s tumultuous relationship with his addict father, the film unfolds in a manner meant to mimic PTSD. In the opening frames we are introduced to our twenty-something “hero” Otis (i.e. LaBeouf’s alter-ego) as he wrestles with rehab and his own inner demons. These sequences are interspersed with Otis’ memories of his childhood. This back and forth storytelling lends the entire film a subdued shellshocked vibe, one that is more often than not jarring. The unhinged aura is further aided by lots of quasi-surreal imagery which floats between the scenes, ultimately intermingling with some serious bouts of intense drama focused on abuse, co-dependency, and skewered expressions of love and affection.
Much of the weight of Honey Boy comes from LaBeouf himself, who delivers a powerhouse performance as the domineering James Lort, a husk of a man living off the residuals of his son’s budding television career (an obvious allusion to LaBeouf’s salad days with Disney). To say that LaBeouf is smoldering in the role of his failed clown father is an understatement.
While there is no question that this is LaBeouf’s vehicle, he is surrounded by a solid cast, including some great young(er) actors. Otis is portrayed at two stages of his life:  the younger version rendered by Noah Jupe--perhaps the brightest child actor to hit screens this year other than Roman Griffin Davis from Jojo Rabbit--while Lucas Hedges gives a captivating display as the older Otis, letting loose with unhinged unpredictability. The scenes between Jupe and LaBeouf are bristling with intensity and levels of uncomfortable drama; many of these scenes, in which James manipulates his young son, are harrowing and emotionally turbulent. And scenes between the older Otis and his addiction counselors are fantastic, yielding some of the sharpest moments of dialogue, not to mention gripping emotion.  At one point Otis mentions that everything his dad told him while growing up was a compendium of things other people had said, alluding to the fact that his father never had an original idea of his own. I am not sure if this was intentional or perhaps I am reading too much into this passage, but it felt rather ironic given LaBeouf’s past real world tussles with plagiarism (his double-bouts with Daniel Clowes, to be precise).
Speaking of the dialogue, LaBeouf displays a keen ear and a sharp tongue for phrasing and audible nuance; words flow from the actors’ mouths like fine wine one minute then shift into melodramatic meltdown the next. Large chunks of the verbiage dwell in the realm of chaotic humor and these bits are expertly buffered by equal amounts of staggering seriousness. There were so many memorable moments uttered throughout the film that I had a hard time keeping track of them all.
Sure, the acting is certainly the core of the film, not to mention the rich visual flair, and captivating dialogue, but it is all augmented by some fantastic sound design as well as Alex Somers’ score, which percolates between sobriety and whimsy, often being both genuine and aloof simultaneously. Its fluctuating sonic dichotomy adheres to the story perfectly and helps create a deeper immersiveness throughout the film.
As with Pedro Almodovar’s recent Pain and Glory, this is yet another highly stylized memoir delivered by a somewhat unreliable--and in this case mentally fucked-up-- protagonist. And like that film, this one also chooses to dip its feet into meta territory with the end result being a captivating story about addiction, love, and repentance.

Rating: 4 (out of 5)
RIYL: Pain and Glory; The Florida Project; The Mid ‘90s;