Critics’ Corner Movie Review: Beautiful Boy

Fiona Joffroy, Senior, Staff Reporter

Based on both David Sheff’s memoir Beautiful Boy and the memoir of his son Nic, Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines, the movie adaptation of these two books, Beautiful Boy, artfully combines the stories that follow a son’s addiction and his father’s battle to help him. While still a moving film, the storyline was a little scattered. The film’s chronology flips between the present and flashbacks, making it hard to distinguish parts of the plot at times. The focus of the storyline pivoted around the predominantly negative points of the story, as it captured Nic Sheff’s peak of addiction, his relapses and his failure to achieve recovery. Clearly this choice was made for dramatic purposes, but at the expense of featuring the positive aspects of father-son relationship.

One of the strengths of the film was the decision to replace much of the typical dialogue that would appear in a film of this caliber with music. The entire soundtrack was based on songs Nic and David Sheff listened to together. For example, director Felix Van Groeningen used  “Territorial Pissings” by Nirvana, one of Nic’s favorites to serve as a parallel between Nic’s life before and during his addiction. In one clip, while the song played, David and Nic drove along the California coastline, and while we see the first glimpses of Nic’s teenage angst, the two of them are content. In the next scene, David was shown picking up Nic from an alleyway on Haight Ashbury Street, San Francisco, with Nic high on drugs, and David trying to comfort his son. This parallel was pivotal in showing how their relationship was altered by Nic’s addiction.

After stellar performances in award-winning films Lady Bird and Call Me By Your Name from 2017, Timothee Chalamet delivered another spectacular performance. Chalamet depicted both the passionate and charismatic boy that was once a part of David Sheff’s life and also revealed a side isolated by anger and aggression through drug use. As for Steve Carell, this was However, this movie was a step outside of his typical comic persona, and he seemed to deliberately hold back, playing his character with a more timid personality than described in the book Beauitful Boy. I was expecting David’s character to have more “character” to him.

The movie was hard to follow at times and did not fully depict many of  the heart-wrenching episodes that filled the pages of both Nic and David Sheff’s memoirs. However, it still showed the importance of a father-son relationship and the influence of culture on one’s thoughts. Before watching the movie, I would suggest reading the book Beautiful Boy by David Sheff in order to fully understand the whole impact of his son’s addiction on both of their lives. The book highlighted the rollercoaster of both good and bad emotions that they go through, whereas the movie focused predominantly on the negative points in Nic’s journey.