Our take
Steve Carrell delivers an amazing performance here. Beautiful Boy is a movie that is based on a true story that first appeared as a best-selling serialized memoir.
It’s about a son’s journey through drug abuse and how his relationship with his father evolves. The son is played by Timothée Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name), Carrell is the dad.
As you can probably guess, the themes of drug addiction and family are made to induce tears, which this movie manages to do in a lot of ways. It can come across as somewhat emotionally manipulative at times. In those moments, it helps to remind oneself that it is based on a true story.
The performances and the exploration of the limits of the father-son relationship remain the reasons why you should consider watching this movie.
Streaming arrival
The story
After he and his first wife separate, journalist David Sheff struggles to help their teenage son, who goes from experimenting with drugs to becoming devastatingly addicted to methamphetamine.
Elsewhere
"Devastating, dramatic, but most of all empathic."
— Hannah Strong
"A test of an actor is playing someone who's split in so many ways that he moves forward while looking backwards and vice versa, and Chalamet is already a master."
— David Edelstein
The details
Who picked it
Bilal Zouheir is the founder of A Good Movie to Watch. He is based in the US and a member of the Nevada Film Critics Society. He grew up in Morocco, where he learned English from watching movies. Bilal's work with A Good Movie to Watch is focused on offering an alternative to streaming algorithms, which are often used as commercial tools by streaming services.
An amazing film I highly recommend watching this, I really felt for the father. An outstanding performance from Carrell.
I’d never think that Carrell could pull this one off, but he did beautifully.
Two words. Simply genius.