Beautiful Boy has a story worth telling, but the way it’s told doesn’t do justice to its subjects as it avoids the real pain of addiction.
30-second review: Beautiful Boy has an incredible true story worth telling at its center, but the way director Felix Van Groeningen presents that story zaps any impact that it could have by opting for style over substance. It’s a classic case of telling instead of showing. The movie tells us that addiction takes a toll on both the addict and their loved ones and that it’s a cycle, but it doesn’t show us that. Instead, it focuses on fleeting emotional moments.
Timothée Chalamet is terrific as Nic, the drug-addict son at the center of the story. The movie works best when it focuses in on him and his journey. But, the movie regularly flinches before it gets to the hard truths. That’s the biggest disservice it does to the story.
Where to watch Beautiful Boy: Streaming on Prime Video.
From its opening moments, it’s clear that Beautiful Boy is going to be one of those tearjerker overwrought emotional dramas. Whether it’s a successful one could take time to parse out—yes, there are successful ones. However, it’s apparent from the cold open, frequent time jumping, and aggressive music cues that Beautiful Boy is going to be a trying experience.
That’s not to say the true story of father and son pair David (Steve Carell) and Nic Sheff (Timothée Chalamet) working through the latter’s addiction isn’t worth telling. However, director Felix Van Groeningen‘s interpretation of the material strips out the actual emotion from the story and replaces it with something that feels artificial and cold. Emotional moments are often dictated in the movie, not earned.
The issue is that it seems the entire movie is made up of “emotional moments” as Nic bounces from rehab to hospitals to the streets as David seems to be chasing him around trying to force him to get better, something that just pushes Nic further away from his grasp. Along the way, Nic’s stepmother Karen (Maura Tierney) and mother Vicki (Amy Ryan) are also there to support both men in the journey, but this is truly a father and son story.
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Beautiful Boy has its moments and Groeningen deserves credit for those. A highlight comes nearly midway through the movie when David waits for Nic at a diner to confront him after his latest relapse. It’s a gorgeous dance between two great actors, particularly Chalamet whose balance of desperation from the high and frustration with his enabling father feels realistic and spot-on.
In another moment, after Nic and his addict girlfriend Lauren (Kaitlyn Dever) break into David and Karen’s home to get money to support their habit. However, David and Karen return home and catch them as they drive off. Karen hops in the family’s minivan and gives pursuit. As she drives, though, Karen is quickly flooded with emotion at the lost “beautiful boy” she’s chasing. Tierney is great here. But moments like these are sparse in the movie.
When Groeningen allows the actors to take the material and the characters and run with it with their incredible instincts Beautiful Boy works. However, he’s often too heavy-handed.
The same goes for the erratic editing style which distracts from the narrative. There’s an argument to say that it helps communicate the feeling of addiction both on the person and their family. Particularly the repetitiveness of addiction—addiction, sobriety, relapse, addiction, sobriety, relapse. But the style also brings out another feeling: avoidance.
It feels like the characters and the story are an arm’s length away. The majority of the movie is told in breezy music montages—the number of needle drops is confounding—that doesn’t give you a chance to actually get to know the characters and make grasping the narrative even harder.
Beautiful Boy has a great story and tackles a part of addiction that movies often miss—how the people we love do more harm than good when they’re trying to help. There’s been some criticism around the portrayal of meth addiction here, specifically, that I don’t have the insight into, but that being said Chalamet does great work. Carell, on the other hand, feels miscast.
Addiction dramas need to be unflinching and Groeningen, to be frank, flinches. The movie looks beautiful, but addiction isn’t beautiful. It was almost as if he was afraid of the truth of it all. I’d love to have seen this story tackled by another director.
Beautiful Boy is now streaming on Prime Video.
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Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.
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Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.
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