| Amazon Studios | Release Date: November 8, 2019 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
33
Mixed:
6
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
Movie NationDec 7, 2019
Honey Boy just tells us one story, with judgement and compassion, with an honesty that surprises and moves us. And it leaves it to us to decide if it was all worth it, if indeed the end justifies the means. You will never look at a child’s performance in a film or TV show the same way after this.
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Nov 25, 2019
For me, it doesn’t really matter if LaBeouf is letting himself off the hook, or if Honey Boy is the ultimate vanity project of a pampered narcissist. What matters is that he has plunged into the maelstrom of his own memories and emerged with a real work of art — something that feels real, feels true, even though we all know it isn’t.
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Nov 7, 2019
Honey Boy will break your heart. It hardly matters if you’ve never given a second thought to the circumstances of Shia LaBeouf’s life, his childhood or his rocky early adult years. But this is the kind of universally moving work that can only emerge from something immensely specific and personal.
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Nov 7, 2019
It’s LaBeouf’s performance as his father that haunts the movie. He’s hateful, but even within the context of this upbringing-as-horror-show, LaBeouf locates crystalline reflections of the better man his father might have been. His performance both exorcises a demon and makes peace with it, which may be a better gift than his father deserves. But then, it’s the giving that counts.
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Nov 7, 2019
It’s a movie that knows in its bones that there are no easy answers. Just the human struggle to find connection. And it’s that vision of unadorned, no-bullshit life, played out against the background of Hollywood film fantasy, that makes a connection so strong that audiences won’t want to let go.
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Nov 21, 2019
Working from a sharp and unflinchingly honest screenplay by LaBeouf, director Alma Har’el delivers a smart and knowing inside slice of show business life that also serves as a harrowing cautionary tale about abuse and about encouraging your children to become professional entertainers when they’d most likely be better off having, you know, an actual childhood.
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Nov 20, 2019
The trick of a movie like this is to ensure it speaks to an audience outside its creator’s trauma. The direction by the Israeli filmmaker Alma Har’el goes a long way to making Honey Boy watchable, bearable, relatable. Poetic, even. Certainly it should resonate with anyone who’s tried to form themselves in the shadow of a difficult or abusive parent.
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The GuardianSep 8, 2019
For LaBeouf, the script was quite literally a form of therapy for deep-rooted issues he still struggles with and as such, it’s an inventive and admirably introspective exercise. As a film though, it’s only half as successful, not quite as involving or as stirring for us as it surely is for him.
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Feb 1, 2019
Ask yourself: Just how curious are you to understand the source of Shia LaBeouf’s insecurities and rage? If this is a subject of high importance to you, then you’re in luck, because Honey Boy offers a sincere window into the actor’s soul: a vulnerable, honest (or at least honest-seeming) act of therapy through screenwriting
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Nov 9, 2019
Honey Boy is a dolorous example of an alarming trend in modern movies — the miraculous ability of an infinitesimal talent to raise money for an obnoxious, self-indulgent film about his own life designed to appeal to absolutely nobody except the arrogant subject himself. In this instance, the jerky centerpiece in love with himself to the detriment of everyone in the audience is Shia LaBeouf.
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