User Reviews

Beautiful Boy is not a fun movie to watch. Although arrestingly realistic, it can be a pretty painful ordeal to endure. In fact, it feels like such an immaculate representation of what it must be like to live through a horrific tragedy that one feels uneasy, restless, and depressed for hours afterward. So – know that going into the theater.

As the story begins, a college freshman named Sammy is calling his parents at home to check in. Mom Kate (Maria Bello) is a typical concerned parent, wanting her child to do well; Dad Bill (Michael Sheen) asks is Sam needs any money and is doing well, and he hangs up. The next morning, the terrible news: Sam has shot 18 students and teachers in his college before killing himself.

The movie wisely shows us nothing of the massacre; its focus is on the aftermath. Kate and Bill are staked out by the media. They escape to her brother's house to live with him, his wife, and their young son. They are vilified on television and online, particularly on Sam's Facebook. Their parenting is constantly questioned. In short time, they are questioning themselves: Did they make this happen? Kate and Bill had been drifting apart for some time, to the point where Bill was actively looking for a new place to live. The tragedy doesn't immediately bring them together, and it doesn't immediately drive them farther apart. Rather, they each drift some more, apart not just from each other but from reality. They blame themselves. They blame each other. They don't blame anyone. They continue on.

There's hardly a note in the movie that doesn't ring true. These characters are not caricatures, and they aren't archetypes, either. Both Bill and Kate seem completely believable, and with the tragedies in places such as Columbine and Virginia Tech, they are characters who very much feel like they could be living next door to us right now. That they are trashed and widely hated is understandable, and luckily neither character lacks the self-awareness to grasp why people are so mad. Bill reasons that the public wants to believe that the couple feels bad about what their son has done. They do, of course. They show their deepening anguish in different ways, but their devastation is complete. Their lives are seemingly ruined.

But this is not a movie without any hope. The subject matter is gruesome, but it's not tiresome. What we see are real reactions from realistic people. There are no real good guys, just a couple of people who've suddenly lost their way. Whether they regain it is almost immaterial, just as it's almost immaterial whether they regain it together. For us, it's the journey from their discovery through the passage of a week or so that's the true endgame. Neither does the film wallow in sentimentality for the sake of making us feel good. The true moments of joy are fleeting, just as they can be in real life. Even a dark movie can contain passionate performances.

It seems that Hollywood, especially lately, has been in the habit of giving us films dealing with parents suffering the loss of a child. We see them scream, we see them cry, we see them go through the same routine. Beautiful Boy takes this theme and puts a unique, much more tragic, spin on it. Michael Sheen and Maria Bello play parents who lose their college-age son, but worse is their son died after shooting up his school. So along with them having to grieve the loss of their boy, they have to suffer the scrutiny of the media attacking their son and them publicly, along with fighting themselves in trying to figure out what led to this awful thing happening. They fight with whether they're responsible, whether they should take time to grieve or try to go back into things and as many other things as you can think of in this struggle for normalcy in understanding when everything else is fighting against them.

Of course anything dealing with themes like this gives way to a lot of opportunity for melodrama. There's a subplot with a novelist that is very silly and expected and a few other scenes that rang false, but for the most part the film was surprisingly honest and from the heart. These characters suffer in real ways and even though the film initially splits the two into stereotypes, Bello having the hysterical screams and disbelief and Sheen with the stunned silence, as it progresses they both go through phases of devastation, denial and just a need to understand and get past it. It doesn't do anything particularly unique in how they grieve, but the two performers make you feel everything these characters go through. They bring a lot of power to their roles and it can definitely hit very hard at times.

Both Sheen and Bello have always been fine actors who rarely get the chance to demonstrate their immense talents. Here they are given full opportunity to let their skills show and neither of them hesitate to do so. Whether they are having a shouting match in a hotel room, consoling one another in tears or just silently trying to deal with this huge tragedy, it's hard to take your eyes off either of them. It definitely goes down the expected path, but these two make it well worth watching with their powerhouse performances and I did admire the slight turn on what had kind of become a tired setup. Making the son this kind of person added a lot of layers to the struggle these two had to go through.

It can be hard to evaluate a film such as this. Its striking realism is both a gift and a curse: seeing its protagonists in their naturally empty and shell-shocked state for much of the film doesn't make for entertaining viewing - nonetheless its emotional scenes pack such a weighty punch, heightened by Sheen and Bello's terrific performances, you can truly feel their agony.

While the fallout from the unconscionable number of tragedies that inspired this film tends to focus mainly on the perpetrator, then on the victims and their families, "Beautiful Boy" wisely forces its audience to think about the side of the story that is rarely heard.

Kate (Maria Bello) and Bill (Michael Sheen) are a struggling couple who are sleeping in separate rooms. He's looking at apartments while she still hopes to save the marriage with the next family vacation. Their son Sammy (Kyle Gallner) is away at college. He's miserable and he goes on a shooting spree killing himself and many others. The onslaught of media forces them to stay with her brother Eric (Alan Tudyk) and his wife Trish (Moon Bloodgood).

Bello and Sheen are using all their acting skills to drive this movie. The movie strips away all the power. The shooting takes place off screen. The movie doesn't allow Sammy to explain his actions. Kyle Gallner just doesn't have much screen time. It's all about the parents struggle to find meaning. It's a movie of misery. It's admirable but it grinds down the audience with its unrelenting bleakness.

The first forty-five minutes of Beautiful Boy, I must admit, were minutes that included strong acting and harsh realism. The whole plot of the film is hard to really grab a hold of and decipher it, since really, it is a story that is just so hard to comprehend. But one too many things go wrong with this film that are results of maybe the film's own personal setbacks, and the screenplay's too.

Bill (Sheen) and Kate (Bello) are a middle-class couple with a son in his Freshman year of College. The son is Sam Carroll, played by Kyle Gallner who, if you recall, was in Kevin Smith's most recent work Red State as the horny teenager who fell pray to a radical, religious cult. Sam is troubled, ignored, and underestimated. Bill and Kate are shocked and in denial when they get the news the next day that their son walked into his morning class, with a handgun, and opened fire on his teacher and classmates.

Now is the part we rarely think about when it comes to tragedies like school shootings - the aftermath for the shooter's parents. Their whole life has just went from mediocre to worse in a matter of a second. They are unfairly blamed, stamped with the seal of "bad parents," and are now trying to save their already dying marriage by holding onto the only one who knows their pain.

It's heartbreaking to think about both of the affected sides in an incident like this. Not only have many lost their life, but the ones who were the parents of the killed now have to go on and struggle to find their ability to cope with the sudden change. It's hard on everyone.

Michael Sheen and Maria Bello create pretty well acted chemistry, but ultimately, the film is its own worst enemy. Beautiful Boy was shot was a 16mm camcorder meaning that the picture quality isn't stellar compared to what is the norm now. That doesn't bring the film down as much as it is how the film works with its low budget. The color scheme is nothing but bleak - gray and black only hit the screen, which might be parallel to the subject matter I'm not sure. But it just seems like it wasn't meant to be this way.

The directing by Shawn Ku doesn't do too much justice either. During some of the intense and believable fight scenes between Sheen and Bello, they are usually victim to "swift pans" which is where a shot, instead of cutting to the other person talking it just spins right over to that person. It's sloppy, and is extremely distracting from what the film is trying to show.

The screen writing saves the film majorly here, yet it lacks one fatal flaw - it's emotionless. We feel sad and a little gloomy, sure, but just thinking about the premise might have made people shed a few tears. The film is free from waterworks, and this is coming from a guy who cries during My Girl, Stand By Me, and Toy Story 3.

It might seem like I'm being way too critical, but once you get past those minor setbacks, Beautiful Boy truly is a pretty good film. It explores a field rarely shown and thought about. We don't really think about the parents of the murderer, or how they are affected.

One sub-plot I wish the film would've explored was maybe having one of the neighbor's kids being killed and then the aftermath of between the couple of the killer and the couple of the victim. Imagine the victim's couple was close friends with the shooter's, and then think about how much of a war would've went on with the neighbors. I feel that that would've made a great little addition to a film already very limited.

Beautiful Boy is a good first effort for a plot like this, and hopefully, more films will explore this topic with a heftier budget and further pursuing of the story would occur. There is a film coming out pretty soon called We Need to Talk About Kevin, and from reading the plot and details of it, it seems Beautiful Boy wanted to be something just like that. It will most likely suffer by comparison when that comes out, when really, its setbacks are some that you just can't really overcome.

Starring: Michael Sheen, Maria Bello, and Kyle Gallner. Directed by: Shawn Ku.

Kate (Maria Bello) and Bill (Michael Sheen) have been struggling with their marriage for years and have decided to give it one final go before actually calling it quits. One night while planning their huge family vacation, their son Sam (Kyle Gallner) calls and seems quite out of it. Both Kate and Bill seem worried but feel that Sam is just having a rough time during his first semester away at college. The next day, life goes on as normal until the couple is notified that their has been a mass shooting at their son's college. Its only a matter of hours before Bill and Kate's already troubled life gets worse as they learn that Sam is not only dead, but the one who began to shoot up the school. A raw, realistic, and heart-wrenching look into our society ensues...

Man, do I love movies like this! I love movies that dare to tackle subject matters that our society just completely ignores. Beautiful Boy is not only a realistic tale about a crumbling marriage, but also a unique look at the family of a trouble college student who did the unthinkable. In a time where school shootings are at an all time high, there comes a movie like this that dares to examine the subject matter from a unique perspective. For years after mass shooting at various schools like Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois, and of course the notorious Columbine, its about time some filmmaker dared to take a look into this subject and from the parents point of view.

When we hear about school shootings, we always think about the crazy kid who shot up the school, but we never question for a second, what about the parents and how are they taking the news. The media tends to point the blame at the parents and state that they must have screwed the kid up and caused him/her to do that. Why purely blame the parents? Why isn't it on our society? The media? Or even just the large amount of hate in this world. No one can deny that there are some crazy people in this world, but the question that remains is who is to blame and what would ever bring a person to take on such horrific action? No one knows and this film doesn't necessarily answer that questions, but instead does show how hard the parents not only take the loss, but how it makes them feel as people who have to live with knowing what their child is a killer.

While this film not only tackles that difficult subject matter; it also takes a brutally honest look at divorce and the basic struggles of every day life. Many husbands and wives stay together for the kids in our society today. I personally know several people that have stood together for the years when their marriage was on the rocks. Beautiful Boy shows this with Bill and Kate throughout the film and how the couple goes through periods where their love is strong and where it is weak. There is a huge fight scene near the end of the film in which Kate and Bill begin to violently argue about the relationship and whose fault it is that Sam turned out the way he did. That scene would bring tears to the eyes of any couple who has a kid or wants a child. It is gripping, raw, and unforgettable.

In order for this film to work as perfectly as it did, it clearly depended on Maria Bello and Michael Sheen to give realistic and believable performances. Needless to say, they nail it and gave some powerful and gut-wrenching performances. The chemistry and tension that they face is as real as any that I have seen in real life. When they are happy on screen, you are happy and when they are sad and miserable, you are sad and miserable. This film is clearly a character study of Kate and Bill and while there are some great supporting roles its really only those two who we as audience members are focused on. Bello and Sheen are the ones knock this film out of the park and give some truly Oscar worthy performances.

I applaud director/writer Shawn Ku as well as co-writer Michael Armbruster for creating a film that makes our society look at life, marriage, and adolescent violence from a whole new perspective. The script was well written and the scenes were placed perfectly throughout the film to make the movie keep the audience wanting more. The emotional scenes in this film were beautifully captured by Shawn Wu, who seems to have an eye for detail on capturing raw emotion from his actors. With Wu's direction, Beautiful Boy feels makes the audience feel as though we are dealing with the events that are taking place on screen and as filmmakers that is a great accomplishment.

At the end of the day, Beautiful Boy is definitely not the feel good film of the summer, but is probably one of the most powerful and realistic films that I have seen in many years. It's real, raw, and brutally honest and I love that about indie films. I love feeling good when I go to a movie, but I also like movies that tackle issues that are relevant to our society today. This film does that and while many may not appreciate how honest of a film this is, I did and applaud everyone involved for taking on a film of this caliber. Beautiful Boy will more than likely be one of those films that around December of this year that will make it's way onto my " best of" list for the year.

In this nearly terrifying age where our children are growing significantly faster than we want them to, fear, anxiety, and near paranoia starts to overtake the best of parents. In America, we have witnessed, in this generation alone, some of the most evil ever conducted by mankind in all of history; the fall of the twin towers, the war in Iraq, the shooting massacre in Virginia Tech, all terrible staples in my memory and I'm not even thirty yet. What other horrors will this lifetime bring? As a new father, I want to wrap my daughter Sophia in a bubble and never let her see the light of day for fear of what she may either endure or be influenced by. Shawn Ku's Beautiful Boy examines the aftermath of a young man, Sammy, that commits a mass shooting at his school and ultimately takes his own life. Bill (Michael Sheen) and Kate (Maria Bello) are your average married couple. Held back by grief, guilt, and rage, Bill and Kate undertake the scrutiny from the presses and the families as the sole reasons for young Sammy's demise. How could you move on from a nightmare you couldn't wake up from? Ku takes on the story with ferocity, examining a vast subject, which perks our ears up and raises our eyebrows. Ultimately Ku fails at getting down to the emotional center of this tale. The narrative picks up rather quickly from the beginning but loses pace and theme quickly. It's not necessarily a failure on Ku's part or co-writer Michael Armbruster, simply not as evolutionary in terms of independent filmmaking. The premise is enticing enough to withstand its flaws and it does have moments of brilliance, especially in the scenes following the shooting. However, it's the powerful performances of Michael Sheen and Maria Bello that hook the viewer in and safely guide throughout. Michael Sheen delivers his finest performance since his towering work in Stephen Frears' The Queen. Sheen attacks the character unlike anything seen from him before. He is engaged and delivers the emotional peril of a heartbroken father attempting to pick up the pieces in the most magnificent ways possible. Sheen invites the viewer into his world, showing the ugliest and worst parts about him, and letting us form our own opinion. Downright brilliant. Maria Bello, who I fell in love with in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, handles Kate with care, love, and ease. Bello's precision and dedication to the craft stands nearly on the top of most actresses today. It also equals one of her finest works in years. Her heart-on- the-sleeve approach not only allows us to respect Kate but it transforms her into a clear sign and example of masterclass acting. Where it can easily be taken over the top, Bello holds it right to the edge, never pushing us over. In a rare and personal plea, these two performances should well be on the Oscar radar. As a small and obviously personal film, Michael Sheen and Maria Bello deliver clear and cut, two of the most worthy performances of award's recognition this year. It's reminiscent of the same feeling Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams delivered in their powerful works in last year's Blue Valentine. In his briefest scenes, Kyle Gallner (Sammy) boils his performance to the rim and delivers a clever and daring performance. Beautiful Boy has raw and emotional power without falling all over itself with melodrama, but it does come up short in some narrative regards. But with these two talented actors in tow, the film will knock your socks right off in simple artistry.

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An unsettling account of what might happen if your son became a mass murderer, it paints a picture of a family torn up over their child's actions and the new perception the rest of the world sees them in. I don't think I could cope with the endless barrage of Press at the door, nor the loss of friends or stares in the street from total strangers. Then there's the questions: Could I have done anything to stop it? Was his state of mind caused by my own inattention? Did I show him enough love?

This is an impossible situation for the parents to deal with, especially as they were on the edge of divorce even before these tragic events transpired. But all they have left is each other, and the film demonstrates their new found alliance against a hostile public. The performances couldn't be bettered, and the remorse you feel for this couple is palpable as everyone seems, in the absence of their dead offspring, to make them the scapegoats. It's not their fault. They loved their son. Sometimes, children just go bad. After all, I don't think Hitler's parents had any idea of the monster they were raising, did they?

At first, I hated the last scene. Too many unresolved plot threads, not enough resolution. But the more I think about it, it makes sense. Connect your own dots. Imagine your own follow-up. I would like to say they'll be fine, but I have my doubts... 7/10

This is another movie about a couple whom has lost a child except the difference is it is told from the perspective of parents whose child killed other students before committing suicide.

The movie starts out with the couple, Kate and Bill, planning a vacation with their son. We don't learn much about the son except he's in college and is a loner. The film jumps from there to them learning that he's killed other kids and himself. Now, they find themselves ostracized and must wonder did they raise him right. Was it there fault he turned out to be a killer? The two were already going through marital problems and of course this makes it worse. Kate clings to the hope that their son was good and it's not their fault while Bill begins to believe they raised him wrong. So most of the movie is just a lot of grief.

FINAL VERDICT: It was OK, but slow moving and the subject matter is depressing. Maybe check it out on cable.

Beautiful Boy is beautiful.

Its beauty lies in the honest and real way it shows the effect on the parents, family and community. It is powerful, emotional and altogether well made.

I like that I haven't seen a movie like this before. This is something happening in our country but we don't talk about it. We don't do anything before or after to help those affected; especially not the family of the culprit.

The acting is spot on. Maria Bello and Martin Sheen were amazing. Alan Tudyk was just right. He played the supportive,shocked brother/uncle. But he was there for his sister in just the way a good brother would be. Alan was the reason I went to see this movie and he was in it for quite a while.

Don't be put off by the subject matter. This movie is a great character study. It is well made and worth seeing. I'm glad I saw it. I'd go again.

This is a film about the parents of a teenager being responsible for a school massacre. It's not about the violence, but about the nightmare it is to be the parents of what has been a nice boy, doing atrocities.

This film is about coping, about dealing with something that can't be undone, about getting through, about reconciliation, about trying to move on. and it succeeds well. but don't expect this to be a drama filled with excitement. this is made give bot expressions and hope. It's a love story, and an unusual one, about surviving the impossible.

Maria Bello and Michael Sheen does another great acting job here. I'm not too fond of the clipping technique or the camera movements here. But it doesn't ruin the storytelling. when the film takes an unexpected turn, it adds to the reality of it. It's not easy what they are going through. We follow the reactions, the realization and the up-waking from the sorrow.

Very realistically told I guess in every aspect, and interesting as it's just seen from the parent's point of view. That is both interesting and important, as this is rarely a view of such a case which we rarely think about and experience. In a way this film both gives us the feeling, and an impression of there still being hope even after an unspeakable tragedy like this.

Meat Loaf is turning up in a y role as a motel clerk.

The film was mostly just the two parents talking. No footage of the beautiful boy, no explanation for his actions. The filming made me dizzy, too much camera motion. Very dissapointed.

BEAUTIFUL BOY fills a gap in our understanding of how events change us. The story is three stories, really: a marriage in disarray due to an increasing distance between a husband and wife, the terrifying discovery that an only child is dead, and the horror of the reality that that dead child murdered classmates and faculty at his college without a knowledgeable prodrome. It speaks loudly to contemporary marriages and families torn asunder by lack of communication in a time of sheltered or imposed privacy of cellphones, blogging, computers that prevent face to face communications at critical times.

Bill (Michael Sheen) and Kate (Maria Bello) are living a stalemate of a marriage on the brink of ending: Kate is a proofreader for writers (currently for Cooper played with great sincerity by Austin Nichols) while Bill immerses himself in his business life. They now have separate bedrooms, their only tie is their son Sammy (Kyle Gallner) who is off to his first year of college. Bill and Kate learn that there has been a shooting incident at Sammy's college and that a number of students were killed. When police arrive at their home they receive the news that Sammy is among the dead but worse than that, Sammy is the one who killed all the students and faculty and they committed suicide. Bill and Kate are devastated, become the source of the paparazzi and move in with Kate's bother Eric (Alan Tudyk) and sister-in-law Trish (Moon Bloodgood) and their young son. The tension continues to build and when Kate attempts to hide her grief by caring for the brother's house and family, Bill and Kate move to a motel run by a compassionate clerk (Meat Loaf Aday). Events happen and Bill and Kate flirt with restoring their marriage only to separate: the manner in which they find their way back toward sanity by confronting their own demons is the quiet way in which this story ends. Instead of a predictable happy ending the audience is left in the throes of the mending process - a writer/director choice that makes the film far more dramatic than most.

Sheen and Bello give razor sharp portrayals of these two devastated, questioning people. This is their film and the way they react to every moment of the story is simply uncanny. Their performances are staggeringly well done. But then the entire cast is polished, making this film a model for other films about difficult life situations credible.

Grady Harp

The catastrophe is looming like in a camp horror movie in the opening of this well-acted film about one of our time's biggest taboos, school-shootings. Which is why it doesn't feel like a spoiler revealing that Beautiful Boy explores the aftermath of one such, seen from the point of view of the killer's parents. And through the sensitive, powerful performances of Michael Sheen and Maria Bello, the film manages to stay on the right side of melodrama.

The film received some notice at various film festivals, such as Toronto International Film Festival and San Sebastián International Film Festival, but was a box-office failure.

It is one of the greatest problems of America as shooting sprees occur every now and then. It is a great effort to deal with this problem, but it fails psychologically, perhaps mainly because the problem in itself is too difficult for anyone to handle. It must be wondered at, however, that the parents themselves act awkwardly in handling it, the boy left a video which they never can bear to watch, instead of confronting the situation and dealing with it efficiently they suppress it and their pains, and all they achieve in their handling of their son's action is a lot of tears and self-accusations, which tend to lead to the sum that they actually never knew their son. Whenever there is some intelligent argument and conversation that tends to attack the problem, it peters out, it is abandoned, and nothing comes out of it, like water poured in the sand. Another flaw in the direction is the constant movement of the camera, instead of properly filming scenes it keeps constantly fluttering about, like in tiresome Danish dogma films, actually preventing the actors from acting while letting the camera go acting instead, as if it had the right to act by itself and more than the actors. It is a terrible problem left unsolved and not handled with any psychological capability. Sorry, it's an effort to deal with America's perhaps greatest problem which only manages to show it.

A bit of a torture film that does not explain the event at all. It simply follow the couple during the aftermath. Maybe there was genetic predisposition. Well played though.

My wife and I found this movie dull, interesting and lacking any real spark. The first 3rd of the movie was okay, the middle 1/3 was totally boring and the final 1/3 a bit more interesting. The movie really seemed to drag for a while in the middle as so many movies do, they take what should be a 50-minute script and try to make a movie out of it. The acting in this movie is good, but they simply can't save what isn't there to begin with. There simply isn't enough character development or interesting moments in the story to make this a good film. At no point do we see the back story of why the couple became estranged or what led their son to go on a killing spree. I guess due to this being a low budget film or 1st time director there is no variation in the film and it is flat throughout. A very reserved film style that lacks anything fresh or original. I'd love to see someone write a movie on this subject again, only this time do it the right way.