On October 12th, the well-anticipated movie, Beautiful Boy, was released in New York City and I had the privilege of traveling there to see it. This new movie is a true story based on two memoirs written by father and son, David and Nic Sheff. The first memoir, Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction is written by David Sheff about the struggles his family went through and how they dealt with their son Nic’s methamphetamine addiction. The second memoir, Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines, written by Nic, shares his point of view about his struggle with drugs, which began at a young age, and his road to recovery. The two memoirs put together make up the movie starring Steve Carrell and Timothée Chalamet.
While Steve Carrell is a widely known actor for his comedy roles, including the TV series The Office, Chalamet is relatively new to the acting world. His most popular movie, Call Me By Your Name is what really sparked the public’s love for him. His role in that movie, Elio Perlman, earned him an Oscar nomination. While a year ago, he had just a small following, his fanbase has grown massive. Even though Chalamet’s fame has grown, he has stayed very down to earth and is a fanboy himself. In multiple interviews he has explained his excitement with working with The Office star Steve Carrell.
In order to take on the role of Nic Sheff, Chalamet had to lose about 20 pounds, which is a substantial amount of weight considering his build is already very thin. Chalamet takes his role to the next level and portrays Nic Sheff in a way that no other actor could and he proves it in Beautiful Boy. Steve Carrell also plays his character of David Sheff very well. The pain he goes through while watching his son struggle is very real. The two make a great on-camera duo.
The movie follows father and son through addiction. Nic is unable to explain his addiction to his father just as his father struggles to understand the addiction. While the movie could have done better portraying the time that had passed between scenes, a majority of the scenes ran together with no sign of time passing until a line was said, it was still understandable. Also, the soundtrack played in the back of the movie seemed to be very basic. There were many scenes in which a better song for the mood could have added something to that particular scene. There also seemed to be an emphasis put on the fact that David Sheff was a journalist but the movie never went anymore in depth. I believe this is due to the fact that David’s memoir originally started out as an article.
Although the whole movie was very poignant, there was no one scene that was dramatically sadder than the rest, they were all equally sad. I felt for Nic’s father, David, and how Nic’s decisions were impacting his other children and wife. I felt for Nic, who so desperately wanted to become clean, but just couldn’t. It was frustrating to watch Nic relapse time after time even after he had gone years without using. It was frustrating seeing David begin to lose hope for his son, his “beautiful boy” as he calls him. I believe the movie accurately depicts addiction and how it truly is a disease. This movie made me look at addiction very differently as I think it has for many others who have seen it. I will definitely be seeing it again once this movie is released nationally and I recommend it to others as well.