Hon­ey Boy

Ask any­one who was a child in the ear­ly 2000s for the role they most close­ly asso­ciate with Shia LaBeouf, and odds are they’ll refer to Louis Stevens, the wacky pre­teen pro­tag­o­nist of tween sit­com Even Stevens, or Stan­ley Yel­nats, the wrong­ful­ly-con­vict­ed hero in Andrew Davis’ com­e­dy-adven­ture Holes. In recent years LaBeouf has become bet­ter known for his his off-screen antics and meme-gen­er­at­ing abil­i­ty than his 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 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, plus Alma Har’el in the director’s chair, Hon­ey Boy has a lot going for it beyond that 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, play­ing the char­ac­ter 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 dif­fi­cult process of recovery.

The hazy, dream­like qual­i­ty of Natasha Braier’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy empha­sis­es the swirling, semi-unre­li­able nature of mem­o­ry, as the film cen­tres on Otis liv­ing with his eccen­tric father James (LaBeouf, who looks a lot like David Fos­ter Wal­lace for some rea­son) in a row­dy hous­ing com­plex. Their rela­tion­ship is one of extreme highs and lows. James is an alco­holic strug­gling with sobri­ety, while Otis is fre­quent­ly forced to shoul­der more respon­si­bil­i­ty than he can han­dle, devel­op­ing a friend­ship with his old­er neigh­bour Shy Girl (FKA Twigs) and tak­ing up smok­ing as a cop­ing mechanism.

Jupe plays Otis with an aston­ish­ing­ly del­i­cate bal­ance of world-weari­ness and wide-eyed naivety, while 10 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 is care­ful to show his father’s human­i­ty. James Lort, for all his faults, isn’t a mon­ster; he’s just a ter­ri­ble dad.

This feels like an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion, because Hon­ey Boy feels like LaBeouf mak­ing peace with that him­self, avoid­ing self-pity in favour of self-reflec­tion that comes in the form of tri­umphant cathar­sis. It’s a pub­lic explo­ration of very pri­vate trau­ma, and works because of the nuanced per­for­mances, as well as the frank­ness of his script. Cred­it where cred­it is due: LaBeouf and Har’el have cre­at­ed some­thing tru­ly special.