Beautiful Boy (2018)

Director: Felix Van Groeningen

Genre: Drama, Biography

Runtime: 111 Minutes

Main Cast: Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan, Christian Convery, Oakley Bull, Kue Lawrence

Plot: Beautiful Boy is a movie based on a pair of best selling memoirs written by father and son David and Nic Sheff, chronicling the experiences of Nic’s drug addiction, recovery and relapse, and the effects on himself and his family.

My Thoughts: So this was Monday night’s ODEON Screen Unseen movie! I’ve come to learn that the cryptic clues they give out always point to a movie they know everyone is hyped to see – when really it isn’t! I’m sure they’d angled their clues for A Simple Favor to make it seem it would be Bohemian Rhapsody, and every clue this time around could easily point to Glass. Thing is – Screen Unseen movies are always the lesser known movies regular movie-goers would skip, so it was never really going to be Glass.

Still, when the screen came up with Beautiful Boy, it was funny to hear the groans by several people, and then we had a few walkouts. I still find that odd, if you’ve come out to see a secret screening, are you not willing to give whatever’s shown a go?

Anyway! Gosh, this was a tough watch. It’s the perfect movie for this kind of screening because as much as I’ve been looking forward to seeing Carell and Chalamet’s performances, I just can’t get excited about the movie itself. Can anyone be excited about a movie like this?

As I knew they would be, the performances were exceptional. I’ve been a huge fan of Carell since The Office, and I never thought he would be doing such serious and hard-hitting roles after! It suits him though. The main thing that didn’t sit well with me though was I never found myself invested in the characters enough, and I don’t know why. It also feels much longer than it’s runtime.

Best Bit: In the first part of the movie there are a few times that father and son embrace and say ‘everything’ to each other. I knew there would be a moment that we would find out when and my heart exploded into a million little pieces.

Worst Bit: Honestly, there’s no moment in the movie that I would deem ‘bad’. There are several scenes that are tough to watch for sure though.

Fun Trivia: The real Nic Sheff stated in a Q & A that the drawing book that David, Steve Carell in the movie finds of his son’s addiction struggles was drawn by Nic’s real-life half-brother Jasper Sheff.

My Rating: I can’t think of something funny to use as my rating that isn’t wildly inappropriate, so Beautiful Boy gets a very sensible 3 and a half stars from me.