Beautiful Boy ** (2018, Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan) – Movie Review

Steve Carell stars as real-life troubled dad David Sheff and Timothée Chalamet co-stars as his drug and booze addicted son Nic Sheff in Belgian co-writer/ director Felix Van Groeningen’s Beautiful Boy, a drama of an American middle-class family coping with addiction.

The film is faultlessly well meaning and good hearted, but it is too one-note, rather unsurprising, and a bit of lecture. Don’t take drugs, but if you do, help is at hand. It is not really the involving, heartwarming, inspiring film you hope it would be.

Nobody will deny that Timothée Chalamet is a Beautiful Boy, and that he has no trouble at 22 convincingly playing an 18-year-old, but he isn’t nearly as effective here as he was in his breakthrough role in Call Me By Your Name. But then the Beautiful Boy role is so unsympathetic that you turn away from and reject his alienating character.

It is frustrating that there is no real impression of what makes the boy an addict. There’s a hint that the father is suffocating the son, but the father is obviously such a good man that we can’t see quite how he can be at the root of the boy’s troubles. Essentially, the boy is painfully nice too, making his road to hell hard to come to terms with, though that, probably, is the point.

Though it is based on memoirs by both father and son, the book Beautiful Boy by David Sheff and Tweak by Nic Sheff, the film seems, as its title implies, entirely derived from David Sheff’s book. And it is a memoir. There is no actual plot or story in the film, just a series of free-wheeling, impressionist scenes, dotting around fairly chaotically. This structure would suit a memoir, but not a drama film.

The situation is seen entirely from the father’s point of view, so the anguished dad role is entirely sympathetic, giving Steve Carell a much easier task, so, also with more screen time, and the star role, he out-acts Chalamet. Carell gives a masterclass in looking tragic, getting deep frown lines on his forehead.

Chalamet tries to follow suit, but he seems much too nice and clean cut and basically optimistic for this character. And the character is hardly characterised at all. He is just either taking drugs or trying to clean up his act, so Chalamet has just two modes to play, which is restricting.

The women’s roles are none too sympathetic either, giving Maura Tierney (present wife Karen Barbour) and Amy Ryan (ex-wife Vicki Sheff, the boy’s mother) troubles to score very much at all. They are kind of just there as wallpaper in the background.

Beautiful Boy is watchable, especially for Carell, but must count as a disappointment, though it is an honourable film, actually about something, none the less.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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