In Sundance’s ‘Honey Boy,’ Shia LaBeouf Revisits His Childhood Traumas
The most fascinating question advanced by Honey Boy, a rough gem of a film written by and starring Shia LaBeouf, doesn’t have to do with any LaBeoufian dad-demons. This might seem strange for a movie that, on paper, boasts the built-in allure of exposing the troubled past of one of Hollywood’s finest bad boys and longest-standing wild cards. But in practice, the film—which LaBeouf based on his real-life relationship with his dad—unfolds as a rather straightforward father-son drama, complicated by addiction and pride and violence and, of course, competitive virility. Yet concealed beneath the film’s more familiar beats is a less obvious question, posed not by a son to his father but by an artist to himself: How can heartache fuel creativity?
Expertly directed by Alma Har’el, Honey Boy is, more than anything else, a painstakingly sincere therapeutic exercise. The film intercuts between two distinct periods: 1995, at the beginning of a child actor’s career, and 2005, when that same actor has grown into a stormy alcoholic. This LaBeouf proxy is named Otis, played as a 12-year-old by the fantastic Noah Jupe (of A Quiet Place) and as an adolescent by Lucas Hedges. LaBeouf, costumed in absurd hippy clothing and never-ending sideburns, embodies Otis’s motormouth dad James, a recovering addict and ex-clown who, in the 1995 segments, lives with Otis in a rundown motel. The 2005 scenes take place mostly in rehab, where Otis has been placed after a drunken accident, and his reflective time in the facility provides a useful, if standard cinematic framework.
Both the 1995 and 2005 segments open with Otis on a film set—as a kid, he’s having a pie thrown in his face; as an adolescent, he’s being blown up in an action film. In both scenes, Otis is propelled through the air, out of control and flailing—until the fictional shot ends and he’s lowered to the ground by a cable line, brushes himself off, and returns to position for another take. This, the film seems to say, is an actor’s work life: rote, controlled, secure. No matter how many times Otis is exploded or humiliated, he’ll always be guided back to his mark.