Review: Beautiful Boy

There's no denying that Beautiful Boy is an inherently heartbreaking portrait of the loving but strained relationship between a father and his meth-addicted son. Yet there's something distancing, didactic and even a whiff of the after school special in its execution, despite the sterling and deeply committed performances of Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet as the film's central duo, David and Nic Sheff.

Based on their memoirs - David's Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction and Nic's Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines - the film essentially revolves around David's opening query to a doctor about Nic's addiction: "What is it doing to him, and what can I do to help him?" Belgian director and co-writer Felix van Groeningen presents scene after scene of David, a freelance journalist living in Marin County, California with his second wife Karen (Maura Tierney) and their two young children, standing helplessly by as he watches his eldest son change from a bright and beautiful boy into a junkie so desperate for a fix that he would steal eight dollars from his own younger brother. In his memoir, Nic wrote that he even prostituted himself for drug money; Van Groeningen chooses to steer away from depicting such sordid details, though not necessarily to the detriment of the film, but it would perhaps served as relief from the fairly monotonous narrative.

Indeed, the narrative oscillates from periods where Nic appears to be handling his sobriety to those that emphasise just how slippery a slope it is to recovery. Much like David, one roots for the beautiful boy to return because, without the drugs, we can see how Nic is brimming with such charisma and potential. Carell and Chalamet inhabit their characters' plights so well that one can keenly understand their pain and despair. There's one moment early in the film when father and son are sitting in a car outside a rehab facility, and David just stares at his son. Carell makes you feel every iota of David willing his son to get the help that he needs and, later, the torment at having to practice tough love. There's only so much David can do without endangering himself and his family; it's up to Nic and Nic alone to help himself.

Ultimately, the film is too be admired for Carell and Chalamet's performances as well as its matter-of-fact look at the reality of those living with addiction and those it affects, even if audiences remain on the outside looking in.

Beautiful Boy

Directed by: Felix van Groeningen

Written by: Luke Davies, Felix van Groeningen; based on the memoirs Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff and Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff

Starring: Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan, Kaitlyn Dever, Andre Royo, Timothy Hutton, Lisa Gay Hamilton