Movie Review: Shia LaBeouf Plays His Own Bad Dad In "Honey Boy"

Feeling sorry for LaBeouf is a whole new experience for us.

Shia LaBeouf has been making his business our business for much of the past decade. His new film, Honey Boy, is just the tabloid fixture’s latest and most public exorcising of his demons, which is saying something, considering he once walked a red carpet with a paper bag over his own head.

LaBeouf wrote the autobiographical script in court-ordered rehab as part of his healing process, and he stars in the filmed adaptation, directed by Alma Har’el, as a version of his own father. (And here we thought John McEnroe was his uncanniest casting.) That may cause some to approach it with caution, and not unreasonably, but I’d suggest throwing caution to the wind. This, you gotta see.

Child actor Noah Jupe plays Otis Lort, a stand-in for young LaBeouf in every way except in name. We watch as he attempts to carve out an acting career circa 1995 with his deadbeat dad James, a former clown and ex-con, serving as his chaperone on sets. LaBeouf plays the elder Lort as a snake-oil salesman with a receding hairline who can hardly stand that his own son pays his way through life. He motormouths through the shame, or, when overwhelmed, wallops Otis into subservience.

This daily horror is intercut with sequences set 10 years later, in 2005. Here, Otis is played by Lucas Hedges, and now a rage-filled movie star who burns out publicly and winds up in rehab, where he’s encouraged to reckon with his past. Over 93 minutes, we see how the sins of the father were passed down to the son, but in a sign of growth and courageous empathy, LaBeouf also attempts to explain how his bad dad came to be as well. Honey Boy is a film of forgiveness, and could have only been convincingly written and performed by the victim.

Does it selfishly ask the audience to absolve LaBeouf for his own failings too? Hedges’ performance keeps it from becoming an exercise in self-pity, with the older Otis taking accountability for his actions. Jupe is even more impressive, especially in a scene where he has to convey his mother’s complaints to James over the phone, and then act as an intermediary between the two arguing parents; he starts 'playing' his mum and dad, mirroring their tones of voice, because maybe if he acts it out—the one thing he’s told he’s good at—he can pretend like this life isn’t his own.

Regardless, this is the Shia LaBeouf show, and his turn here is revelatory (or would be, if we hadn’t seen flashes of greatness and boldness throughout his career, which has made his flame-outs all the more heartbreaking). He’s written himself a showy role with plenty of monologues, but given the true-to-life circumstances, it becomes the least self-congratulatory character he’s ever explored. When the film sheds the meta veil in the final act, you see how inhabiting the role of his dad is actually a gesture to free his father from torment, rather than an attempt to redeem LaBeouf. Thanks to the sensitive stewardship of Har’el, Honey Boy is a beautiful and deeply moving film, when it could have wound up simply testing viewers’ eye-rolling capabilities.

4/5

Honey Boy opens in Australian cinemas on 27 February. You can catch a preview screening in WA as part of our Film School screening series on Monday 10 February. Rated MA15+ for strong coarse language.