Between pedantry and precociousness: ‘Mirai’ and ‘Beautiful Boy’

Beautiful Boy, dir. Felix Van Groeningen

Like many comedic actors in Serious Roles, Steve Carrell is a fire blanket, smothering the energy that makes him a whiz. This adaptation of a pair of memoirs dealing with David Sheff’s anguish over the crystal meth addiction of son Nicholas (father and son each wrote one) errs fatally when concentrating on the father’s anguish. Shuffling from therapist to his computer, Carrell can’t generate pathos; he’s a lump. Worse is a flashback structure that purports to explain the drug and its consequences as if the audience comprised a few thousand morons in Hialeah. Many ABC Afterschool Special episodes I watched in the eighties depicted this behavior with less pedantry (however, we should have been so fortunate as to have Timothy Hutton, life’s ambition satisfied, playing the Judd Hirsch role in Ordinary People). As Nicholas, Timothée Chalamet shudders and shivers, going through the well-traveled motions of dozens of actors angling for award recognition playing people in the throes of addiction.

Yet even at his nadir, Nic’s hair has a rich buttery sheen; those crack houses must have superb hair salons.

GRADE: D

Mirai, dir. Mamoru Hosoda

Few things frustrate children more than the birth of a sibling. Four-year-old Kun takes the arrival of Mirai particularly bad. Once the center of attention from distracted, modern parents, Kun is forced to throw tantrums to get their attention; he even swats baby Mirai across the head with a toy. Kun’s dad stays home with the kids as if to compensate, a gesture that still leaves Kun unsatisfied. Then one morning he spots a mysterious younger man with a tail in the front yard; when he yanks it and slaps it on his rump he transforms into a dog. The truth is revealed: the stranger is Yukko, their family dog anthropomorphized.

Theses scene are among many quiet delights in Mamoru Hosoda’s wonderful animated film, last seen on these shores with The Boy and the Beast, a dazzling but overstuffed fantasy set in Tokyo. In short order Kun’s dashing World War II-era great grandfather and a grown Mirai, among other visitations, help him find order. Without exposition nor — I’m looking at you, Beautiful Boy — pedantry a host of relatives visits Kun in what turns into a poetic rewriting of A Christmas Carol. Moving with a fluency of gesture that would shame live action films, Hosoda positions her characters in living spaces that call Naruse to mind (the Ozu comparisons I’ve read don’t work, unless it’s the less ritualistic sense of play of later films like Good Morning they have in mind). One to watch in the theater.

GRADE: A-

Mirai is playing this week at Living Room Theatres FAU.