Review of Honey Boy (2019) by Moviemitch96 — 30 Nov 2019

This was an autobiographical film written by and starring Shia LaBeouf about his upbringing as an up-and-coming child star in Hollywood under the supervision of his abusive alcoholic father, and how he copes with it in rehab during his teen and young adult years.

LaBeouf plays his father in this film, while Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges portray a loose version of Shia as a child and teen/young adult respectively. Intrigued by its high ratings clear back from when it premiered at Sundance in January, I decided to check it out.

Unfortunately, this film mostly proved a waste of time, at least for me it did. To me, all it seemed to be was a statement/excuse on Shia's behalf as to why he's always getting drunk, arrested, and behaving so poorly in Hollywood nowadays.

While I can certainly see that the guy clearly has demons, it didn't necessarily make me feel any more sympathy for him, if that's what he was aiming for. On top of that, watching the young child actor playing the 12-yr-old version of him swear constantly, smoke cigarettes, and hang around trashy women isn't really my idea of a good film.

By the end of it all, I was pretty convinced that this not only served to try and appear as a sympathy piece for LaBeouf, but also as a pat on the back for himself, which I definitely think is completely undeserved.

Overall, I won't deny that there were some standout performances (Noah Jupe, despite all of the uncomfortable adult things he's portrayed doing in this film, really pulls no punches with his at times highly emotional performance, and Lucas Hedges does a great job as usual too!) Otherwise there's nothing really worthwhile here if you ask me.