Movie Monday: Honey Boy

Sometimes I search the Rotten Tomatoes website, I look at the movie ratings on our broadcast channels. It's always frustrating when you see something that sounds good, and then you see if the critics' score was 30% and the audience's score was 20%. But recently, a film that was almost a perfect product for critics և viewers - Honey Boy , written by իա performer Shaya Labiouf (: called semi-autobiographical), caught my attention. We both enjoyed this entertainment: a gripping film about a dysfunctional childhood.

A young Noah Jupe ( A Quiet Place ) plays Otis, a twelve-year-old actor trying to get to Hollywood. She lives with her father, James, a former drunken rodeo clown played by an almost unknown Shia Labif. They both live in a dilapidated motel down the road, and their immediate neighbors are a group of young prostitutes. Otis supports them both, on whom both of his parents depend. James is one of the most ineffective dads you'll ever see on screen (which means something). The alternate scenes take place in the future when Otis, now 22 and starring Lucas Hedges, becomes a Hollywood action star living a life full of alcohol, drugs and women. One night, drunk driving, he had a terrible accident and was sent to a rehabilitation hospital. There, his therapist, played by the great Laura San Giacomo, tells him that he is showing all the symptoms of PTSD, even though he claims to have never been traumatized. Gradually, at the stage of recovery, he begins to open up, remember his childhood, appearing in alternative scenes for the public.

This is a powerful way to tell the story of a traumatic, difficult childhood, while at the same time talking about what happened in his childhood, about the impact of this childhood on adults. The film was nominated for numerous awards, most notably for the screenplay "Shia Labiouf", first directed by Alma Harel, for its extraordinary portrayal of young Noah Jupe as a child in dire need of parental love. - ից grows out of need. It's a powerful, touching film, but it's fun. As viewers mourn the loss of young Otis' childhood, we have reason to hope for a better future for Otis. One can only imagine that writing this film and then playing it in the father's version would be very emotional and therapeutic for Labiouf. It certainly offers a very raw, honest, powerful story.

Honey Boy is created by Amazon Studios and is available on Amazon Prime.

If, like me, you're curious to know more about Shia Labiouf's weird on-screen childhood and his feelings for his father, check out this amazing interview with Jimmy Kimmel.