Beautiful Boy
Beautiful Boy is well-acted and handles a sensitive topic with the care it deserves, yet ends up being an ‘important’ film more than a well-made one.
Beautiful Boymarks the english - language debut for Belgian movie maker Felix Van Groeningen , as well as the culmination of a ten - retentive attempt to adapt David and Nic Sheff ’s memoirs about the latter ’s experience battling drug addiction for the grownup screen . The film screened at numerous festival out front of its release in theaters and earned generally positive bombilation , peculiarly for the performances by guide Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet . Indeed , in many way , theBeautiful Boycast outshines much of the rest of the film . Beautiful Boyis well - play and handle a raw topic with the maintenance it deserves , yet ends up being an ' important ' motion picture more than a well - made one .
Carell wizard inBeautiful Boyas David Sheff , a professional journalist whose son Nic ( Chalamet ) begins drinking and taking drugs while he ’s still a stripling in the nineties . By the time Nic is a young grownup , he ’s used just about common drug that ’s out there and developed an dependence to quartz glass meth . Desperate to facilitate his son before it ’s too late , David continuously checks Nic into rehab and back again when he get worse , all while doing inquiry to comfortably understand what his boy is locomote through .
Yet , no matter how hard David , his wife Karen ( Maura Tierney ) , and his x - wife / Nic ’s mom Vicki ( Amy Ryan ) seek to help Nic stay unclouded , he seems to of necessity terminate up relapsing and using drugs yet again . Over time , Nic ’s relationship with his family originate all the more strained as he turns to increasingly desperate bill to keep his drug riding habit going , once the stress of being solemn becomes too much for him to bear . Thus , David is eventually forced to confront some hard truth about what he needs to do ( or , rather , mustnotdo ) to ensure that Nic fully convalesce at last .
adjust from the Sheffs ' memoirs ( Beautiful BoyandTweak ) by Groeningen and writer Luke Davies ( Lion),Beautiful Boy ’s enceinte posture is that it drives home the reality that drug habituation recovery is a cyclic appendage and that relapse is an often necessary step to a more permanent state of sobriety ( counterintuitive it may seem ) . Problem is , a literary memoir arguably lends itself to a repetitive narration like that more than a three - act film does . This was intelligibly an issue that Groeningen ran into during post - production onBeautiful Boy , gauge by the report that he spent seven month cut the movie and even assembled several different cut before he finished it with the assistance of his longtime pardner , Nico Leunen . Unfortunately , the final theatrical baseball swing still has pacing issues and skin to find a beat within its repetitious story beats .
The actual editing inBeautiful Boycan sure as shooting be affecting , specially when David is remembering the happy days in his life with a young Nic ( including , a 12 - class old Nic played byIT ’s Jack Dylan Grazer ) . Still , even these flashbacks can feel mechanical and often go to take gravid emotional deepness or meaning to a scene in the way that similar flashes to the past in something likeFirst Mando ( to refer a late example ) . The same could be said for the film ’s other technical elements , be it the otherwise handsome cinematography by DP Ruben Impens or the song that Groeningen employs to express the mood of any particular sequence or here and now . WhileBeautiful Boyis dead respectable when it comes to its general sense of craftsmanship , there ’s nothing that really stand out about the film or gives it much in the style or personality or unique smack , either .
Carell and Chalamet ’s performances are what at long last giveBeautiful Boymost of its pathos and let it to load down a strong punch than it might ’ve had without them . Chalamet somehow managed to obtain weighting to fall back and , thus , better lay out the physicality of a drug addict , yet it ’s his ability to capture Nic ’s conflicting sense of guilt , thwarting , desperation and ( occasionally ) joy that really wreak the character to life onscreen . Carell likewise excels in realizing David ’s full range of emotion , whether he ’s worm with his fear that Nic will break if he does n’t discharge everything to relieve him or his anger that any of Nic ’s trouble are happening in the first place . WhileBeautiful Boyis first and foremost a father - Word story about David and Nic , it also provide Tierney and Ryan with their own moment or two to shine ( though both actresses still end up feeling under - used , admittedly ) .
speak of which , there ’s also a valid give-and-take to be had about whetherBeautiful Boywould have benefitted from expanding its gaze to well incorporate Karen and Vicki ’s experiences dealing with Nic ’s dependance retrieval and/or taking a close looking at at the privileges that Nic is open ( seeing as he come from a jolly comfortably middle - class white family ) . At the end of the Clarence Day , however , the flick is mainly focused on secern its history through David and Nic ’s eyes , in gild to better shine a light on Nic ’s personal battle with drug addiction . This comparatively non - intersectional approach is nevertheless part of the reasonableness whyBeautiful Boyoverall has a tendency to sense like a very well - intentioned PSA , but a PSA all the same .
Even ifBeautiful Boyfalls short of being a great pic , it still succeed at being one that has a real sentience of determination and a cause to exist . It ’s also a movie that boasts two moving performances and further cements Carell ’s repute as an role player who can handle drama and comedy equally well , at the same clip that it keep on Chalamet ’s sensation on the up and up . Beautiful Boyis ( obviously ) not an easy watch and will undoubtedly make some motion-picture fan to shed more than a few tears , but it ’s worth checking out - whether in theaters ( so you could keep up with this twelvemonth ’s laurels contenders ) or afterwards , when you could watch it and cry in the comfort of your own habitation .
TRAILER
Beautiful Boyis now playing in U.S. theater across the nation . It is 120 minutes prospicient and is rated roentgen for drug contentedness throughout , linguistic process , and brief sexual material .
Maura Tierney, Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell in Beautiful Boy
