The Peanut Butter Falcon
2019
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Nov 8, 2019 · Their childhoods were sacrificed. What keeps "Honey Boy" from being self-pitying is not just its intelligence and humor, but LaBeouf's choice to play James. The film itself is part of a healing process, you can feel LaBeouf working out something, squinting into his past, trying to understand and heal. The final credits feature pictures of ...
Rated: 3.5/4 Mar 3, 2020 Full Review Paul Kanieski KSQD Community Radio Honey Boy might be LaBeouf’s ultra-personal autobiographical attempt at self-repair, but it also succeeds as a brutally ...
- (239)
- Alma Har'el
- R
- Shia Labeouf
Nov 7, 2019 · Rated R for themes, language, drunken hellion montages. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. An earlier version of this article misstated the source of funding for the production of "Honey Boy." It ...
- Alma Har'el
- Glenn Kenny
- 94 min
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Full Review | Jul 12, 2023. By the final frames of Honey Boy, it becomes achingly apparent that the film is at once a work of auto-fiction and confessional. Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 ...
- Shia LaBeouf's autobiographical indie film is a heavy but engaging watch.
- Verdict
By Rosie Knight
Updated: Apr 28, 2020 10:17 pm
Posted: Nov 5, 2019 7:00 pm
Honey Boy is the kind of film that hurts to watch, and that's entirely the point. Shia LaBeouf's brutal act of therapy on screen is a tight and emotional exercise that's really just as much about what it doesn't include as what it does. Directed by Alma Har'el, the autobiographical indie flick centers on a young actor called Otis who acts as the film's analog for Shia; it even opens with a Transformers-esque action shot. Otis is played as an adult by the wonderful and frenetic Lucas Hedges who shines as the traumatized star, and as a child by the astounding Noah Jupe. LaBeouf himself does a harrowingly good job as his own father, here known as James.
As with any (auto)biographical film, the biggest question that surrounds it is how much really happened. Well, just like in real life Otis is a child star who lives in a motel with his ex-rodeo clown dad whilst shooting a kids' TV series. This is pretty much exactly the story of LaBeouf's early days in Hollywood whilst starring in Even Stevens. This authenticity and apparent honesty are at the heart of what makes Honey Boy special. From the outset the story seems dedicated to being uncomfortably real with Otis' hard-living Hollywood lifestyle, ending with him in rehab before the credits have even rolled. It was this real-life stint that led the actor to create Honey Boy as a rehab-mandated form of catharsis and to that end, it seems incredibly successful. LaBeouf spills his proverbial guts on the page, sharing some of the most terrible and intimate traumas of his life, not just as a writer but as an actor relieving his abuser impact on screen.
We follow Otis through his court-enforced rehab and therapy that focuses on immersion -- a technique used to help survivors of PTSD -- which throws Otis back into his childhood. Har'el utilizes this smart and slick narrative trick perfectly, enabling us to live through both Otis' trauma and the very beginning of his recovery. There's a fairytale-like feel to his childhood memories as Jupe believably plays a little boy who's old before his time, living in the neon-hued dreamworld of the Los Angeles motel where his father puts them up. Otis spends days on set and nights either near-euphoric with the freedom that his life affords or sadly smoking alone in his room whilst waiting for his unreliable father figure who can't quite get his head around being a parent. LaBeouf and Jupe are like a particularly horrible car crash, not in that they aren't good; in fact, they're brilliant together. But no matter how awful the scenes between them get, you can never look away.
Honey Boy is a really good film. Har'el directs it beautifully and the pair offer up something that feels both classic and boundary-pushing when it comes to the idea of what an autobiographical film can be. Hedges, Jupe, and LaBeouf are electric to watch and Har'el creates a visually engaging world that perfectly captures the childlike confusion an...
- Rosie Knight
Nov 27, 2019 · Honey Boy: Directed by Alma Har'el. With Shia LaBeouf, Lucas Hedges, Noah Jupe, Byron Bowers. A young actor's stormy childhood and early adult years as he struggles to reconcile with his father and deal with his mental health.
User Reviews. "Honey Boy" is powerful. A brave, bold portrayal of Shia Labeouf's real life trauma. "Honey Boy" is an honest, intense, bold, and powerful look at actor Shia Labeouf's problems which developed because of his abusive father, who was also his manager. Although Shia has given the name Otis to the movie's central character, there are ...
