Film

Beautiful Boy

Name: Beautiful Boy
Genre: Drama
Released: 2018
Cast: Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan, Christian Convery

A father-son memoir adaptation told in fractured, non-linear flashbacks, tracking journalist David Sheff's helpless love for his son Nic as meth addiction takes hold. Carell plays anguish quietly; Chalamet is all raw nerve. It's tender, handsome, occasionally over-scored, and built for people who want to feel the ache of loving someone you can't save rather than watch a plot unfold.

TMDb rating

7.6

If you liked this

Ben Is Back2018

The same year, the same subject, but sharper and more claustrophobic — one agonising night as a mother tries to keep her addict son safe and honest. Julia Roberts is ferocious.

But It compresses everything into 24 hours, so it hits harder and gives you less room to breathe than Beautiful Boy does.

A Star Is Born2018

Another 2018 release wrestling with addiction inside a loving relationship, this time wrapped in music and stardom. Cooper and Gaga make the collapse feel inevitable and devastating.

But It's a romance and a showbiz tragedy first, addiction story second — a different emotional shape than the parent-child focus here.

Manchester by the Sea2016

For the grief underneath the grief — a film about a man who cannot forgive himself, told with the same unhurried, undramatic sadness that makes Beautiful Boy land.

But There's no addiction plot at all; if that's specifically what drew you in, this is a tonal cousin rather than a subject match.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Spun2003no page yet

Same drug, same downward spiral, but where Beautiful Boy asks you to grieve, this one drags you inside the high itself — the wild, ugly register the family drama is too tasteful to show you.

A frenetic, filthy, blackly comic descent into meth addiction told from inside the high — jump cuts, strobing edits, no dignity offered to anyone. Genuinely funny and genuinely horrifying.

But It's deliberately trashy and chaotic, with none of Beautiful Boy's compassion or craft — some will find it repellent rather than illuminating.

Trainspotting1996

Danny Boyle's kinetic, darkly funny heroin classic gives you addiction from inside the high rather than from the anxious parent's side of the door.

But It's stylish and jokes its way through horror in a way that can feel glib next to Beautiful Boy's earnestness.

Requiem for a Dream2000

The formal, hallucinatory nightmare version of addiction — Aronofsky turns dependency into pure cinematic dread. Essential if you want the subject taken to its bleakest extreme.

But It's punishing and stylised rather than tender; there's little of the aching hope this film keeps returning to.

28 Days2000no page yet

A gentler, more mainstream rehab drama with Sandra Bullock, useful if Beautiful Boy's despair left you wanting something that ends up somewhere more hopeful.

But It's slighter and more conventional — a studio comedy-drama, not the raw, literary thing you just watched.

Rachel Getting Married2008

Anne Hathaway as a family's recovering addict, arriving home for a wedding and detonating old wounds — brilliant on how addiction reshapes everyone around it, not just the user.

But The handheld, chaotic wedding-video style is a big swing from Beautiful Boy's polished restraint.

The Basketball Diaries1995no page yet

A young Leonardo DiCaprio as a promising teenager sliding into heroin — the same trajectory of talent and love curdled by addiction, from decades earlier.

But Rougher, cheaper, more melodramatic; it doesn't have Beautiful Boy's careful craft or emotional control.

Traffic2000

Steven Soderbergh's sprawling look at the drug trade from cartel to suburban living room, including a judge whose daughter is an addict — the wide-angle version of this same crisis.

But It's an ensemble policy drama more than an intimate character study, so the emotional focus is much more diffuse.

The Man with the Golden Arm1955

This is Hollywood's first serious attempt at exactly this story, decades before Chalamet was born — the same addiction narrative arriving under a censor's watch, showing how much has changed and how little has.

Frank Sinatra as a card dealer trying to kick heroin, made when the Production Code barely allowed drugs to be named on screen. Tense, stylish, and startlingly frank for its era.

But Black-and-white, theatrical, and moralistic by modern standards — a museum piece compared to Beautiful Boy's naturalism.

Dopesick2021

Zoom out from Nic Sheff's bedroom to the machine that made addicts of thousands of families like his — same epidemic, same heartbreak, but told as an indictment rather than an elegy.

An eight-part miniseries tracing the opioid crisis from Purdue Pharma's boardroom down to a small Appalachian mining town, with Michael Keaton devastating as a doctor caught in the middle.

But It's angrier and more systemic — courtrooms, lobbyists, corporate malice — a different animal from one family's private anguish.