Beautiful Boy, the feature film debut of co-writer/director Shawn Ku, takes an incendiary turn on the standard grieving parent narrative by centering the drama on parents who not only lose their child to a Columbine-like massacre but also learn their son was the madman behind the slaughter. In concept, this shocking narrative sounds like a Lifetime Channel melodrama, and sadly even with earnest efforts from stalwart performers Michael Sheen and Maria Bello, Beautiful Boy never manages to rise above that low bar.
At the start, long-married couple, Bill (Sheen) and Kate (Bello), are living solitary lives. With their only child Sammy (Kyle Gallner) in college, the two are finally beginning the business of breaking up. Already in separate rooms, Bill has begun bachelor pad hunting and Kate is planning a family vacation so she can break the news to their son. For his part, Sammy seems a sullen teen, but his mom reassures him during a short phonecall, “College is an adjustment.” After an enigmatic conversation, mom and son hang up, and Sammy stares meaningfully at a burned DVD McGuffin. Cut to the next day, Kate gardens in front of their lovely suburban home and Bill mills about at his office, unaware their world is about to implode. In the coming hours they will learn their son walked into his morning class with two loaded weapons and mercilessly gunned down his friends, fellow students, and teachers. From here, Bill and Kate flee their home, which is besieged by the media, and after briefly taking up with family (Moon Bloodgood and the undervalued Alan Tudyk), end up in a hotel room where drunken coupling devolves into strained shouting matches and finger-pointing. Beyond coping with their grief, each parent struggles with the nagging question, “Was it my fault?”
While it’s a provocative topic, Ku devotedly avoids potentially charged moments in favor of numerous sequences of awkwardness. There are no scenes of the massacre; Bill and Kate are never confronted with other mourning parents, and largely avoid watching the news where their son is a hot top and hated public figure. Instead, Kate distracts herself with busywork and insists it was college that destroyed her beloved son. Bill is more introspective, fearing his own repressed rage was the source of his son’s destruction, but neither of their journeys makes for gripping drama. Now, it’s admirable that Ku attempted a keen character study over a broader social issues drama, but sadly he lacks the ability to manage nuance and Beautiful Boy achieves only two modes: hushed tones and wailing. Bello and Sheen, who are often poignant and engaging no matter how bad the material, flounder here. Too much of Sheen’s focus seems dedicated to his American accent — which withers in his more boisterous moments — and Bello’s tortured mother seems an indecipherable sketch of a million other mourning movie moms. And because we are shown so little of Sammy before his murder spree, it’s hard to take a side and by extension feel invested in the couple’s debate. Whose to blame? This outing is so lifeless, who cares?
All in all, Ku’s film is a ripped from the headlines narrative that aims high, looking to choose taut character-driven scenes over exploitative violence and clothes-rending portrayals of grief. However Ku’s amateurish direction fails his well-reputed leads, resulting in a limp and predictable tale of personal tragedy. Couple these shortcomings with the painfully jittery handheld cinematography that’s framing often feels uncomfortably voyeuristic, and Beautiful Boy becomes a film that’s hard to watch on several levels. Ultimately, this grief-driven drama is flat and forgettable.