Reed Morano

"""In “Honey Boy,” Alma works deftly, without gimmick. From what I’ve seen, her work is always elegant, but here I think it may also be because of her confidence in the story, how she’s so deeply connected to it and to her subject, Shia, with whom she shares a common bond. LaBeouf’s script seems to want to hide nothing and to do so, it has to be very naturalistically compelling on its own. At first glance the story seems a familiar one, but this script and film effortlessly show the complex nuances of these relationships in a completely new light. Alma and Natasha Braier, her DP, move the camera emotionally, never drawing attention to style, only pulling you into the character. That said, the work is empirically beautiful. As layers are peeled back through their lens and these beautifully raw performances, Alma’s personal connection to the actors and the subject matter navigates the fine line of both sides of the relationship. It would be easier to show us the black and white, but Alma chooses the harder path, taking us through the gray area. Watching the film forces viewers to acknowledge their own complicated relationships; In my case the one I had with my biological father, which I’ve compartmentalized and downplayed my whole life. I had deluded myself into thinking I was content not to know exactly why he wasn’t there until I was in my 30s. I realize now that I still don’t know the answers to all the questions I’ve wanted to ask him. “Honey Boy” is Shia’s very personal childhood memoir but still somehow manages to become universal, interweaving the feelings and roles of child and parent, how those lines are all too often blurred. It’s about the feeling of failure and the feeling of fucking up. Not living up to expectations as the child and never being enough as the parent, how pride can be the most destructive thing to a family. It is emotionally disrupting watching it, not just as the former child but also as a mother who believes she’s doing it all wrong and the ripple effect she may have caused due to her mistakes. Alma’s work nails something which most films nowadays miss the mark at: it evokes a spectrum of very distinct feelings far too difficult to put into words alone. To convey the “unexplainable” in a way that is neither precious nor forced is incredibly difficult to achieve on film, but “Honey Boy” does that in the most compelling and honest way. By making the audience witnesses to the most painfully intimate moments, the film gives them the quiet space necessary to realize it may be possible to understand and feel deeply even for the person whom they had most wanted to despise. “Honey Boy” speaks the truth: that though you always hope there’s a good reason, most of the time the answers you find will never be enough."""