Susan Granger’s review of “Honey Boy” (Amazon Studios)
Inspired by his own childhood, actor Shia LaBeouf (“Transformers”) wrote this memory drama in which he plays James Lort, a thinly fictionalized version of his own father.
Trained as a rodeo clown, he’s a bitter, divorced Vietnam War veteran and recovering addict. He lives in a decrepit motel and is emotionally abusive to his 12 year-old son Otis (Noah Jupe), who works as an actor on television.
Precocious Otis retaliates with: “You know I’m dong you a favor, paying you to be my chaperone. Who else is going to give a felon a job?”
Otis’ story is told to a therapist (Laura San Giacomo) by his 22 year-old self (Lucas Hedges), now in rehab after being apprehended for public drunkenness and making derogatory racial remarks.
Years later, LaBeouf publicly thanked the Savannah, Georgia, police officer who arrested him in 2017 – after which he wrote this obviously therapeutic script.
“I’m gonna make a movie about you, Dad,” Otis tells his father – and he does.
Directed by Israel-born Alma Har’el, best known for commercials (including Super Bowl ads) and her 2011 documentary “Bombay Beach,” working with cinematographer Natasha Braier (“Gloria Bell,” “The Neon Demon”), the screenplay is semi-autobiographical.
It details the travails of child performers, thrust into the adult world of auditions, contract negotiations and job uncertainty, a cautionary concept that’s reminiscent of “Gypsy” and “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”
Years ago, young thespians like Shirley Temple and Hayley Mills were recognized with special Awards by the Academy. But after 1960, child actors – like Patty Duke, Mary Badham, Tatum O’Neill and Anna Paquin – were thrown into the Oscar competition with adults.
“There’s this perception that women directors only have to make movies about women’s topics,” Har’el explains. “It was challenging to make a film about a little boy and his father, showing things that you maybe wouldn’t have seen if a man directed it.”
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Honey Boy” is a sensitive, starkly sad 7, available on Amazon Prime.
