Film review: Beautiful Boy and Chalamet are ‘Oscar bait’

The heartthrob is award-worthy in a new film, in which he plays a drug addict – but Steve Carell steals the show, says critic Caryn James.

The new film Beautiful Boy, which just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, is a serious story about a serious subject: drug addiction, and one father’s quest to try to save his son from addiction before it’s too late. By every measure, Beautiful Boy is “Oscar bait”, says BBC Culture’s Caryn James. “And that term is not a compliment.”

But though it lives up to the formula for success at the Academy Awards, Beautiful Boy ultimately does go deeper, James says. And while it’s Timothée Chalamet who, as the young addict in question, may end up with a statuette on Oscar night, it’s Steve Carell who deserves one even more for playing his anguished father.

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