Butler's Cinema Scene

Noah Jupe

“HONEY BOY”  My rating: B

94 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Fathers and sons have long been a staple of the dramatic arts; even so, “Honey Boy” stands apart as a brutal yet poetic bit of personal storytelling.

Scripted by actor Shia LaBeouf, whose battles with the law and substance abuse are the stuff of Hollywood legend, the yarn is based on his own boyhood as a child actor being raised — well, sort of — by a troubled father.

And here’s the kicker: LaBeouf plays his own dad, delivering a performance that is simultaneously lacerating and tender.

Twelve-year-old Otis (Noah Jupe) spends his days on movie and TV sets where he is a respected actor.  Usually hanging around — when he isn’t at an AA meeting — is his father James (LaBeouf), an odd duck with scraggly long hair and outsized wire rim glasses who devotes much energy to trying to score with the women working there.

James is a former rodeo clown who once had an act featuring a live trained chicken; he’s  a nonstop talker whose tales are so outlandish you can’t be sure what to believe.  He’s actually kind of pathetic.

He and Otis reside in a rundown motel on the edge of the desert and travel exclusively by motorcycle.

Ostensibly James is the father…but Otis is technically his boss. The kid makes  the money; the father gets an allowance for looking after him. (There’s a divorced mother somewhere, but we never see her.)

You can see the possibilities for conflict.

Shia LaBeouf

The bulk of the story is a flashback framed by the 22-year-old James’ (played by Lucas Hedges) court-mandated rehab.  The grown James is incredulous when his therapist (Laura San Giacomo) suggests he has classic symptoms of PTSD.

“No I don’t,” he protests. “From what?”

Well, from his father.  Though the relationship was rarely physically abusive, the kid has been put through an emotional meat grinder.

“Honey Boy” is the feature debut of director Alma Har’el, a veteran of music videos and documentaries. She brings to the proceedings an ultra-realistic, pseudo-documentary look graced with moments of surreal beauty.

The performances are terrific.  LaBeouf, who in recent films (“Fury,” “The Peanut Butter Falcon”) has shown an astonishing range, is both compelling and repellant as James, caught between genuine love for his son and the demons of his own past.  In a confessional moment at an AA meeting he reflects on his own troubled emotional inheritance…it may be the finest thing this actor has ever done.

Young Jupe is his perfect foil, a kid stranded between innocence and early maturity and looking for parental affirmation that may never come.

| Robert W. Butler