A mundane yet tense movie with some terrific acting
It’s a curious movie alright but not something I was ready after a hard day’s night. Seeing Shia LaBeouf in the acting and writing credits I thought it would be a time pass fun movie on the lines of a ‘Eagle Eye’ or a ‘Transformers’ but ‘Honey Boy’ ended up to be a rather serious movie. So serious that it got a physically tired me to be mentally tired too. But credit has to be given to Shia LaBeouf who was terrific in the film and its amazing that this dude could write too.
The film opens with an interesting scene with Otis Lort (Lucas Hedges) staring at us in the camera and gets suddenly pulled back. We then get to know about his life and how he’s dealing with extreme alcohol problem. Actually, as much as he’s adorable in his younger self (Noah Jupe), Otis gets on our nerves as an adult. As the film progresses, we get to know that his behavior is nothing but another version of his dad James Lort (Shia LaBeouf) who’s an outright asshole. Actually, its Shia LaBeouf and Noah Jupe who carry their film on their shoulders but the situations are so claustrophobic and it gets on us. May be the makers could have resorted to make it less mundane. I had the same problem with ‘Marriage Story’ too. It was as mundane as life actually is. This is where Iranian films are so good at. Even the lifelike films are made so romantically that we can’t help but fall in love with sorrow.
We get to see the flashback of Otis where he gets spluttered by a cake, which again comes as a shocker. It’s ten years back and life has been pretty much the same for him. Having been brought up in a hostile environment he yearns for love which he doesn’t get it through his father. But thankfully James Lort’s character was superbly written instead of being a unidimensional hateaable father. Much unlike Daniel Day Lewis in ‘There will be Blood’. Here the character is more relatable, even though hateable. Whereas in ‘There will be blood’ it was monstrous.
The track between a young Otis and the Shy Girl (FKA Twigs) was inevitable. Even if it looked forced, it was a sigh of relief for making us a little excited in an otherwise heavy movie. Mostly in a movie like this, it’s the forced conclusion which hurts the most. Because it takes the side of one person and the past is left in jeopardy but here it was good to see that his father was still a bad guy till the end. Neither miracles nor disaster happen in a flash, it’s a flow process, may be marijuana is just a start of it.
The problem with the movie was its too much an US movie. May be serious movie watches based out on USA would have liked it for its life like resemblance. They’d have been able to relate to it in a better manner but I was not, it was constantly drifting away no matter how much I concentrate. Alexander Paine, a similar film maker, whose products work wonderfully well for me is an exception. Especially while watching ‘The Descendants’ I was wondering how the hell did a pucca American movie worked for me. May be those are the master’s traits.
constantscribbles 