In Honey Boy, the most recent characteristic from director Alma Har’el (Bombay Beach), Shia LaBeouf performs a fictionalized model of his real-life father, and Lucas Hedges and Noah Jupe play fictionalized variations of LaBeouf. Yet regardless of the unusual premise — did I neglect to say that LaBeouf-as-his-dad is an alcoholic, washed-up rodeo clown who lives in a trailer park? — Honey Boy is comparatively straight-forward, as seen within the trailer above. And our personal Mike Ryan’s evaluation when the movie premiered at Sundance: “You might expect it to be a little more peculiar,” he wrote. “It may have benefited by being a little weirder.” Judge for your self, however honest warning: no scene is about on the darkish of the moon.
Now that could be bizarre. Here’s the official plot abstract:
Fictionalizing his ascent to stardom, and subsequent crash-landing into rehab and restoration, director Alma Har’el casts Noah Jupe (A Quiet Place) and Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea) as Otis Lort, navigating totally different levels in a frenetic profession. LaBeouf takes on the therapeutic problem of taking part in a model of his personal father, an ex-rodeo clown and a felon. Dancer-singer FKA twigs makes her feature-film debut, taking part in neighbor and kindred spirit to the youthful Otis of their garden-court motel house. Har’el’s characteristic narrative debut is a one-of-a-kind collaboration between filmmaker and topic, exploring artwork as drugs and creativeness as hope by means of the life and instances of a gifted, traumatized performer who dares to go in quest of himself.