The Timothee Chalamet Heartbreaking True Story that Doesn’t Pull any Punches

Beautiful Boy is a film based on the memoirs written by David Sheff and Nic Sheff, father and son who each struggled in their own ways with Nic’s addiction to drugs. The movie tells the story quite well through both perspectives.

We see Nic as a young boy, traveling back and forth from his mother’s house in Los Angeles to his father’s home in San Francisco. David (Carell) clearly has a deep love for his son, hugging him tight, caressing his curly hair, reading him books at night before bed, and tucking him in with wishes for his bright future. 

Alas, those wishes are not in Nic’s immediate path.

Nic is portrayed as passionately artistic, a bit of a misfit, and only generally interested in recreational marijuana in high school. At one point, Nic and David smoke a joint together at Nic’s urging, and I can’t tell if, as the audience, I’m supposed to get from this experience that David feels responsible for Nic’s later spiral into dangerous and deadly drugs. 

The film opens with Nic having gone missing from home and shows up days later, clearly hungover from having gone on a bender. The biggest problem is that Nic lives with David, David’s wife, Karen, and their two young children. Nic cannot constantly be bringing drugs into this family home. He knows this, and as a result, he lives in a constant state of anxiety and depression, for which he turns to drugs. 

We see Timothee Chalamet go from the happy and spirited “beautiful boy” to morose and brooding and then to dying from an overdose on more than one occasion. He is imminently believable, and I don’t think any actor today could have pulled this part off better. 

It’s easy to fall in love with Chalamet’s Nic because his smile is endearing, heartfelt, and broken. We understand that he doesn’t want to be addicted to drugs but that he doesn’t know any other way to cope with life. It all feels so overwhelming for him, so big, loud, and pressing. 

At the same time, we feel for Timothee Chalamet in Beautiful Boy; we also relate to the father who loves his son so much and wants to do what’s right. (At least, those of us who have children can relate.) Carell’s David can’t figure out if he should keep letting his tortured son back into the home or if he should turn him away for his own good. And we can understand both impulses.

Through flashbacks, phone calls, and several rescue missions, the audience cannot help but become invested in the relationship between father and son. It cannot help but leave us wondering if we, parents, have any control over our children’s paths. Further, we wonder if there is any ultimate salvation for those who have been lured in by the darkness. 

REVIEW SCORE

Rotten Tomatoes has Timothee Chalamet and Steve Carell in Beautiful Boy at 68 percent for critics but 78 percent for audiences, and that’s not surprising. It feels real to us, even if we’re not picking the film apart critically. I give this film 5 out of 5 stars, and I encourage you to catch it with your Amazon Prime or Apple TV subscription.

I dare you not to cry.