REVIEW #131 Beautiful Boy (2018)

Beautiful Boy is directed by Felix Van Groeningen and follows Nic, a boy who on the surface seems to have everything, good looks, good grades and a strong family but when he turns to drugs and becomes addicted to Meth it’s up to his father to help pull him out. 

CAST & THE ACTING 

Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell play Nic and his father David Sheff respectively. This is certainly another dramatic role for Carell and he performs well, convincingly portraying a father, desperate to save his sick son. Equally, it’s another strong performance from Chalamet who committed and lost weight for the role to convincingly portray the effects of meth on a persons body. As well as being physically committed, he also excelled in the emotional moments of the film and there are more then a few of those! The pair clearly had a lot of trust between one and other because a lot of the scenes rely on them both being extremely vulnerable and that trust between the actors created some really heartbreaking scenes. Amy Ryan portrayed Nic’s mother Vicki and that was rather strange, my mind just kept imagining that Michael Scott and Holly from the Office had gone off and raised a kid together. Once you get past that distraction you can appreciate her performance, it was a smaller role in the film but she did contribute nicely to the emotional effect of the film. So some great acting displayed here. 

PLOT & THE STORYLINE 

The storyline is based on the two memoirs from the real David and Nic Sheff, detailing their experience battling an addiction and from the fathers perspective, helping his son deal with it too. Although the plot is touching and it created a lot of emotional moments that could really impact the audience, I couldn’t help but think that it is just more of the same that we have seen so many times before. It provides the opportunity for the actors to flourish in dramatic roles but in terms of actually being engaging for the audience, I just don’t think it was. It was predictable and quite slow paced, so I found myself getting bored on more then a few occasions. There was a strong attempt at building character development, especially around the relationship between Nic and David before Nic was addicted to drugs. Using a series of flashbacks to show Nic growing up and even how he become familiar with drugs. This did help build up a strong bond between a father and son for the audience to see and it made the moment where David feels he can no longer help Nic really impactful. But as I said it was very predictable so you could see it coming a mile off. 

CINEMATOGRAPHY & SPECIAL EFFECTS 

There wasn’t any use of special effects but what I did love was how they created some beautiful visual cinematography using the natural environment. Some of the locations where they shot the scenes looked fantastic and bursts of light piercing through the trees created such a nice feel for the film. There was a strong sense of pathetic fallacy with the weather often reflecting the current mental state of Nic. Often when he would relapse there would be strong rains or really dark settings, symbolising the dark place he was going too. There was also a really nice soundtrack where the music perfectly matched the tone of the scene. It had a nice indie film vibe which I particularly enjoyed and the cinematography was certainly responsible for that. Everything felt really intimate which reflected the vulnerable nature of the storyline. So the cinematography was definitely a strong point for Beautiful Boy.

OVERALL (7/10)

Beautiful Boy has some fantastic acting and the cinematography is brilliant, creating a strong Indie vibe that made the storyline feel more intimate for the audience. There are some beautiful scenes combined with a great soundtrack that made it a great watch. However the storyline, in my opinion, was where the film fell short. It’s the same thing we have seen a thousand times and unfortunately that made it very predictable. It didn’t help that it was really slow paced, so combined with the predictable storyline it meant I found myself bored at times. However it does give Chalamet and Carell a chance to really flourish in strong dramatic roles and that’s what they did, delivering fantastic performances. I would definitely recommend watching it just to appreciate the acting and cinematography but just be prepared for a slower film. 

Thanks for reading 

Callan