Honey Boy (2019)

Film: Honey Boy (2019)
Stars: Shia LaBeouf, Lucas Hedges, Noah Jupe, FKA Twigs, Laura San Giacomo
Director: Alma Har'el
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I didn't "grow up" with Shia LaBeouf as Louis Stevens in the same way that other people did.  When we got the Disney Channel as part of our cable package I was 16 or 17, slightly too old to watch Even Stevens (even though I did, as everyone else in my high school had also been without the channel since they were on the same cable system), and so he wasn't a goofy fun boy that I emulated, just someone on TV.  As a result, his bizarre public trajectory is more something that I can watch with an objective eye, not as someone who watched a beloved childhood character disappear into an array of plagiarism, drug use, and bar fights.  So I was caught by surprise watching Honey Boy, a movie that LaBeouf has stated was autobiographical about his relationship with his father while he was emerging as a young child star, at how moved I was by the film, and how it made me rethink the way we look at celebrity through the tabloid press.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is brief, and only has time for a few characters.  The film alternates back-and-forth between Otis's (Jupe as a boy, Hedges as a young man) recollections of his father.  Otis as an adult is an action movie star who is in rehab, not for the first time, and is working through his childhood with his therapist Dr. Moreno (San Giacomo).  We keep seeing his childhood in flashback, when he lives in a motel with his father James (LaBeouf), and is starring in a silly TV show (surely meant to emulate Even Stevens).  James is abusive to his son, emotionally as well as occasionally physically, driven by a sense of narcissism & inadequacy.  He makes a point of being four years sober (and this being a movie, you know that's not going to last), and hates the world, frequently risking everything to try and capture some of the fame & opportunity that his son has.  The film unfolds with interactions between the two, as well as an adult Otis coming to terms with the abuse that he endured from his dad, whom he still loves in a fashion despite the hell he went through as a kid.  The movie ends with Otis leaving rehab, and going to have an (imagined) conversation with his father, telling him he wants to make a movie about their lives.

The film is hard-to-watch in a lot of places.  LaBeouf's script is not sparing, even though his father (who continued to have a cavalcade of legal problems that ended with him fleeing to Costa Rica, after the scenes we'd witness in this picture) is still alive.  We see a man who clearly envies and loathes his son even if he also loves him on some level.  You get the understanding of what it's like to have the same dreams as your child, only to realize that your son has the talent to achieve those dreams in a way that you never will.  James is an empty figure in this world, someone who is easily dimissed, and his son is about to become a household name that everyone knows-the jealousy & rage is not contained, and you understand him even as you hate him.

You also leave understanding LaBeouf more in the way that he handles his father.  This is easily the best work from an actor whose promise has oftentimes been overshadowed by his public behavior, not only because it helps to inform some of the erratic actions of his celebrity past, but also because it's a fully-fleshed creation.  There are times when you almost feel like you're watching therapy, with LaBeouf recreating cruel moments from his childhood (the most shocking scene being one where Noah Jupe's Otis is on the phone with his mother, and since neither parent will speak to each other, he has to parrot their vitriolic, profane replies to one another, and being a child actor who is always taught to be "on," he parrots their voices).  The movie's present-day scenes aren't as powerful, given short shift to the chemistry and heartache between LaBeouf's James and Jupe's (also marvelous) Otis, with LaBeouf clearly having less interest in the movie star period of his life (which seems to have ended-he no longer signs on for projects as commercially-assured as Transformers and Indiana Jones) than in the struggles of his childhood.  You leave this film with an understanding not just of his relationship, but of the relationships all of us carry with us from childhood, still trying to find reassurance from our parents.