Beautiful Boy's reviews
Media reviews
The Wrap
'Beautiful Boy' is family calamity writ large, a harrowing and horrifying (and yes, overly long) exploration of the depths of addiction.
Vanity Fair
'Beautiful Boy' moves slowly, heavy with despondent gloom, full of dread and regret. But the somber mass of the film, directed by Felix Van Groeningen, eventually gathers into a fine and piercing point.
Variety
Carell and Chalamet both give excellent performances that should help to launch 'Beautiful Boy' into the awards-buzz atmosphere. That said, there?s not a lot to the characters apart from their relationship to drugs, and so the film has a staid, repetitive quality.
Empire
Its effectiveness is largely down to Timothée Chalamet?s performance as Nic, so painfully convincing it?s bound to repeat the awards-season attention the 23-year-old earned last year for 'Call Me By Your Name'.
Time Out
'Beautiful Boy' is perfectly fine: unflinching where it needs to be, keenly attuned to the cyclical nature of relapsing along with the deeper blows to pride, trust and identity. It sometimes feels strenuous in making its points, but you?ll be too wrecked to call that a demerit.
The A.V. Club
For as much as Van Groeningen may have pulled from both of his mirrored source materials, for as deep as Chalamet digs into his character?s skirmish with own urges, 'Beautiful Boy' holds us outside of his struggle.
Entertainment Weekly
Even as the narrative meanders and doubles back, Carell and Chalamet are too good not to make you care; they just can?t make 'Beautiful Boy' come together like it should.
Vulture
The best news about the addiction-and-recovery drama 'Beautiful Boy' is that Timothée Chalamet?s breakout performance in 'Call Me By Your Name' wasn?t a fluke.
The Guardian
A grim endurance test that?s undeniably flawed but in doggedly aiming to portray this unbearable pain with rare authenticity, it has a raw, haunting power. Told in an often intriguing, often frustrating time-jumping format.
The Hollywood Reporter
This story does not emerge as compelling or convincing, and the film is aggravatingly narrow-minded in its interests. However, if one stays with it all the way to the end, it is absolutely worth sitting still for the end credits, over which is played a monologue by Nic which is the best thing in the picture.