Beautiful Boy (2018)

User Review

• 

  Barneyonmovies

  7 / 10

  WHAT I LIKED: Felix Van Groeningen's 'Beautiful Boy,' tells the true story of a Meth-addicted teenage boy Nic (Timothee Chalamet) through the eyes of his father David (Steve Carrell), and what it does extremely well is to show what a rollercoaster journey such a thing would be.
  
  Narratively, it starts when David discovers the addiction, and then broadcasts the never-ending cycle of ups and downs that come with Nic invariably deciding to quit and then relapsing through his college years. That's extremely frustrating and very tough to watch, especially as David relentlessly tries to do everything he can; believing right up to the end that he can fix it if he can in some way control what's happening, but never truly understanding what it is that has led to his son's troubles, or how he could really get out of them.
  
  That's helped to life by two great performances (particularly in fact from Chalamet in perhaps his most convincing role yet) as well as through the structural devices that Groeningen uses; constantly flashing back to Nic's childhood and other moments through his addiction to further develop David's struggle to understand.
  
  WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: Because it is all seen through the perspective of a father struggling to understand his son, we never really understand his son either.
  
  VERDICT: A rollercoaster of teenage drug addiction is tough to watch for this father, and for the audience who'll be invested by the trauma of it all without ever fully understanding the young man at the cente of it.

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