Beautiful Boy (2018)
…………………………………………………
Beautiful Boy Movie Review
Beautiful Boy is a 2018 drama film directed by Felix Van Groeningen and starring Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet. It’s a well acted and frequently moving, but otherwise messy film.
………………………………………………….
“My son is out there somewhere,
and I don’t know what he’s doing!
I don’t know how to help him!“
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
It chronicles a strained relationship between father and son as the son is abusing drugs and the father doesn’t know how to deal with the progressively worse situation. This is of course a very relevant film in its story and portrayal of fatherhood during the tough times. But there are better movies about both fatherhood and drug addiction than this one which is very solid and admittedly quite strong in some areas, but overall it was overly hyped and not all that great.
The major problem this movie has are the flashbacks which are not only immensely uninteresting, but also utterly unimportant and unnecessary. It was a typical modern storytelling device from the indies which was forced here only to make it seem more sophisticated than it actually is. The movie has its moving scenes and great confrontational dialogues, but the insistence on flashbacks really hurt it in the long run.
Steve Carell should switch to dramas in my opinion as he’s so good in the dramatic roles and here he’s excellent and very likable as the father. Timothee Chalamet himself is also quite good, but I don’t know how some could say that his performance here is better than the one he gave in ‘Call Me by Your Name’ which is so not the case. Both of them are so good here though and their relationship is moving and so well realized.
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
Beautiful Boy is also well shot and its time period is well portrayed, though the soundtrack was overly timely for the seventies and in my opinion it could be quite aggressive in some scenes. I did like its cinematography and particularly the dialogue and characterization, but the direction and especially the pacing should have been better. The runtime was also unnecessarily prolonged to two hours and thus the movie had a blunted impact on me.
Beautiful Boy’s performances are very good with Timothee Chalamet and Steve Carell both delivering strong work here. It’s also good in dialogue and quite moving in some scenes. But the film’s impact was blunted due to its prolonged runtime and a particularly unnecessary over-reliance on uninteresting flashbacks. It would have been so much better had it been more straightforward and shorter in length.
