Drug addiction. 2 of the worst words anyone has to hear, especially for a parent, in reference to their child. Beautiful Boy, specifically is about the relationship between a boy and his father….and sadly, crystal meth. The story of Beautiful Boy is pretty melodramatic and overdirected, but Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet keep the story from veering off into overly manipulative territory, giving this important story their underappreciated talents.
Chalamet plays Nic Sheff, son of writer David (Carell). Nic is raised in a divorced but loving home: David is married to Karen (Maura Tierney) and Nic’s mom Vicki (Amy Ryan) lives reasonably close. Despite what David thinks is a strong relationship with his son, Nic descends into drug addiction, taking riskier and stronger drugs. David is engaged though, and tries to help Nic get clean and sober, which Nic does. However, this only happens temporarily, and then we get a relapse, where the descent gets darker, dragging David and the rest of his family down into Nic’s neverending Addiction.Sobriety.Relapse circle of hell.
As a story, Beautiful Boy is a two actor play in real time that’s expanded outwards across time and actors, with zero/diminishing returns. There’s lots of flashbacks and weird flash forwards (I think?) that either come out of nowhere, or act like periods on sentences for the scene. They don’t really add anything, but just beat the same drum mostly: that Nic had a happy, loving childhood. Amy Ryan and Kaitlyn Dever should consider firing their agents, because their talents go to waste here, becoming whiners or enablers for Nic. Dever especially just kinda shows up to cause a relapse, and be a cause for his recovery efforts. The one exception is Maura Tierney who gets just enough screentime to give Karen some complexity and something of an emotional arc, rising above a stereotype.
However, Carell and Chalamet are the reason to watch this story, because they use their acting force of will to hold Beautiful Boy together. Carell continues to impress with the depth of his talent, proving there may not be a bottom. His David lives and dies a little with his son, and you can see him sort of going through the stages of grief while his son is alive. Little pieces of denial here (letting him go to college), getting angry at anyone and everyone including himself, doing a little bargaining with the doctor and his son, giving up hope for Nic, and eventually accepting his life for what it is. Carell’s makes David’s arc subtle, but believable, never overacting and still delivering spades of emotion using a subdued tenor, like for example, when he has to keep cutting Nic off repeatedly. And then there’s Timothee Chalamet. Already in two of the best films of last year, there was no denying the young man was ready for bigger and better acting challenges. In Beautiful Boy, Chalamet has to take a repetitive pattern and make each sequence seem different. Like every great actor, Chalamet finds new avenues into Nic’s circle of hell, alternating his enthusiasm, his despondence, his high, etc. In general, I believe the sign of a great actor is dragging a mediocre or bad movie into something either watchable or something special, and Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet almost make Beautiful Boy something really special in spite of its limitations.
Beautiful Boy is a message movie, for sure. The end of the film provides some statistics for how hard it is to recover from drug addiction, and your heart sinks all over again like it was doing for Nic Sheff throughout Beautiful Boy. Having known some people with addictions and “black holes” that Nic says he has, I’m glad Beautiful Boy exists, and the two stars took their jobs seriously enough to make this movie realistic instead of manipulative.