Shia LaBeouf’s autobiographical Honey Boy is worth it for child actor Noah Jupe alone
SHIA LaBeouf is a Marmite actor – incredible one minute and incredibly irritating the next.
Honey Boy is a loosely autobiographical film in which he plays his own deadbeat father. Charming in places, sad in others, it goes a long way to explaining his own often bewildering persona.
We meet Lucas Hedges as 22-year-old Otis, an actor hell bent on destruction.
Arrested for drink driving again, he’s sent to rehab to avoid jail. There, he is forced to visit the recesses of his past and, via a series of flashbacks, we learn just what a crappy time he had of it.
We meet his ex-junkie father James (LaBeouf) who is also the paid chaperone of 12-year-old Otis (Noah Jupe), escorting him to film sets, stealing his cash and offering little in return.
Here, the only support or pointers are in the form of punishment for forgetting lines and bitter recriminations against Otis because his mother has moved on to new guy Tom.
LaBeouf delivers more than he has for years, but this could be an otherwise staid recovery story were it not for Jupe’s performance.
You’ll know him as the boy from A Quiet Place and every ounce of sympathy and compassion he drew from us in that film is increased a billion-fold here.
He is incredible – one of the best child actors I’ve ever seen. For such a complex and ambiguous role he blew me away yet again. Worth it for him alone.
Honey Boy(15) 95mins
★★★★☆
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