Movie Reaction: Honey Boy

Formula: (Mommie Dearest - mommie) * Girl, Interrupted

Most child actors end up fine. Think about it. Think about all the shows and movies you've seen with children in them. The majority of them grow up fine. Plenty of the biggest movie and TV stars today started as child actors. Brie Larson was one. Leonardo Dicaprio was a child star. Scarlett Johansson too. Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Ron Howad. Wil Wheaton. The Fanning sisters. Way more child actors just leave the business, by choice or by career trajectory. They go on to live relatively normal lives. I wouldn't be surprised if a higher % of child actors become supremely screwed up as adults than the national average, but it's not the epidemic that people like to make it out to be. We tend to only think about the worst case scenarios. I mean, I do it to. If you say "child actor", my first thought is of Gary Coleman and his parents who spent all his money. My second thought is Drew Barrymore being on drugs by the time she was 13. The bad stories are naturally more interesting, even if they aren't the norm.

To be fair, I don't personally know any child actors. It could turn out that every single one is screwed up. They're all on drugs. Their parents all took advantage of them. But, odds are, like everything, it's all about nature and nurture. People with extreme temperaments or bad parents just have the deck stacked against them. People with more natural poise or good parents are more likely to come out alright.

It's fair to say that Shia Labeouf's situation was not ideal. That's what Honey Boy is about. It was written by Laboeuf. Labouef essentially plays his father. Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges play a Labouef surrogate at different ages. In the Lucas Hedges period, he's an out of control movie star who gets sent to rehab and essentially diagnosed with PTSD. While there, he reflects back on a time with his father when he was younger. That period with Jupe and Laboeuf is most of the movie. Jupe plays a child actor working on a TV show - cough, Even Stevens, cough - and his previously distant father has been hired on as his guardian for the shoot. He's not a very good father. Their living situation in a cheap motel isn't ideal. He's a slick but unconvincing talker. The kind of guy who talks a lot and thinks he's being more clever than he is. It's clear that he's trying to overcome some personal demons, but it's not working.

This is the definition of a vanity project. I felt like I was present for one of Labeouf's therapy sessions watching this. Throughout the movie, Hedges is writing down notes about the experience with his father that we see in the flashbacks. Then, the movie ends with Hedges in a sort of dream state, telling his father that one day, he's going to write a movie about him. That earned a huge eye roll from me in the theater. I'm not a big fan of people patting themselves on the back during the movie. I'll go ahead and say that I don't agree with the praise this screenplay is getting.

The performances are strong. Jupe is even better in this than in Ford v Ferrari. It's hard to believe he's actually British. Labeouf is excellent as his father. It's like you can see him figuring his father out in real time. There's an attempt to understand him  without judging him. I had a little more trouble with Hedges, who's mostly just a raw nerve the whole time.

I'm glad Labeouf got this out of his system. It was interesting to see this perspective on the child actor experience. 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend