Beautiful Boy (2018)

Not for the faint of heart, this story of a meth addict's effect on his family is based on memoirs by the addict and his father. Jack and I liked it. Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet are terrific (last blogged for Too Funny to Fail: The Life & Death of The Dana Carvey Show and Call Me by Your Name, respectively) as the father David Sheff and son Nic Sheff, especially the latter, going through all the mood swings of drug use. Maura Tierney (some of her best work was in White Sands (1992), 97 episodes of NewsRadio (1995-99), 189 of ER (1999-2009), Scotland, Pa. (2001), nine episodes of Rescue Me (2009-11), and seven of The Good Wife (2012-13)--I haven't watched any of her 43 of The Affair) and Amy Ryan (most recently in these pages for Bridge of Spies) are in the background as David's second wife Karen and first wife Vicki. Coincidentally, Tierney was in one episode of The Office with Carell, and Ryan was in 17 earlier ones, with her character Holly dating Carell's Michael in many of them.

Director/co-writer Felix van Groeningen did the same on the moving The Broken Circle Breakdown though I failed to say so in the blog. Van Groeningen and Luke Davies (Davies adapted the book that became Lion) adapted David Sheff's Beautiful Boy and Nic Sheff's Tweak, both published in 2008.

Trivia: the crazed drawings of Nic's in the movie were actually drawn by Jasper Sheff, David and Karen's now 24 year old son, whose birth and young life are depicted in the movie.

The title comes from the John Lennon tune of the same name, written for his second son, Sean Ono Lennon. I can't help but remember that his firstborn, Julian Lennon, got little, if anything.

There's no composer on this movie. I counted about thirty songs in the credits when we saw it Friday. Fourteen are on this spotify playlist and 25 on the imdb list, including Sunrise, Sunset from Fiddler on the Roof, sung by Perry Como.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are lukewarm on this, averaging 69%, and, apparently, not enough viewers have weighed in to give an audience average. Instead, 95% of viewers who voted clicked "want to see." You should probably see it too.