Hon­ey Boy – first look review

From start­ing out as the star of the Dis­ney Channel’s pop­u­lar sit­com, Even Stevens, to more recent for­ays into the world of per­for­mance art, Shia LaBeouf likes to keep us on our toes. Per­haps he’s even bet­ter known for his off-screen antics and meme-gen­er­at­ing abil­i­ty nowa­days than he is for act­ing, with the notable excep­tion of his excel­lent per­for­mance in Andrea Arnold’s 2016 dra­ma Amer­i­can Hon­ey.

When it was announced last year that LaBeouf was to write a screen­play based on his own expe­ri­ences as a child star – and that he would be play­ing the role of his own father in said film – the gen­er­al feel­ing among film fans was one of bewil­der­ment. Still, with a stel­lar line-up of young tal­ent includ­ing Noah Jupe (who stole the show in 2017’s Sub­ur­bicon) and indie dar­ling Lucas Hedges, and Alma Har’el in the director’s chair, Hon­ey Boy has a lot going for it beyond the ini­tial pitch. The result­ing film is a sad, sur­pris­ing, fre­quent­ly touch­ing and incred­i­bly per­son­al insight into LaBeouf’s accel­er­at­ed youth.

Shift­ing between 1995 and 2005, the role of Otis Lort is shared by Jupe and Hedges, who play Otis at 12 and 22 respec­tive­ly. Fol­low­ing a DUI charge in 2005, Otis is ordered to attend rehab, and encour­aged by his pro­ba­tion offi­cer to get in touch with his mem­o­ries in order to begin the process of recovery.

The hazy, dream­like qual­i­ty of Natasha Braier’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy shows the swirling, semi-unre­li­able nature of mem­o­ry, as we cen­tre on child star Otis liv­ing with his eccen­tric father James (LaBeouf, who looks a lot like David Fos­ter Wal­lace for some rea­son) in a row­dy hous­ing com­plex, the rela­tion­ship between them defined by its highs and lows. James is an alco­holic strug­gling with sobri­ety, and Otis is fre­quent­ly forced to shoul­der more respon­si­bil­i­ty than he can han­dle, devel­op­ing a friend­ship with his old­er neigh­bour Lit­tle Q (FKA Twigs) and tak­ing up smok­ing as cop­ing mechanisms.

At times it’s dif­fi­cult to believe that Jupe is only 13, because he plays Otis with such a del­i­cate bal­ance of world-weari­ness and wide-eyed naivety. Ten years in the future, Hedges is a whirl­wind of anger and pain, some­how more infan­tile than Otis in his 12-year-old iter­a­tion, imply­ing a sort of regres­sion brought on by being forced to grow up so fast.

LaBeouf pulls no punch­es in por­tray­ing his father as a deeply flawed man, but there’s a ten­der­ness there too – he has an easy chem­istry with Jupe which makes them believ­able as war­ring father and son, but LaBeouf seems care­ful to illus­trate that his father’s human­i­ty. James Lort isn’t a mon­ster, he’s just a ter­ri­ble father. This feels like an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion to make, because the film feels like LaBeouf mak­ing peace with that. It’s a pub­lic explo­ration of very pri­vate trau­ma, and works because of the nuanced per­for­mances, as well as LaBeouf’s frank­ness in his script.