'You'll need to brace yourself for 'Beau Is Afraid' since it often feels like Greek tragedy filtered through Looney Tunes.'
Review: Joaquin Phoenix shows again why he's one of the finest actors of his generation in 'Beau Is Afraid'Joaquin Phoenix appears in a scene from the movie"Beau Is Afraid."It's not for everyone. That's critic shorthand for a movie that makes too many demands on audiences to qualify as a crowdpleaser.
We first meet Beau Wasserman working his way through the birth canal before cutting to him as a 50-year-old virgin about to embark on a road trip to see his mother Mona .Sound simple? Aster makes sure that it's anything but. You'll need to brace yourself for "Beau Is Afraid" since it often feels like Greek tragedy filtered through Looney Tunes.
It's a relief when this mama's boy visits his therapist, played by Stephen McKinley Henderson with a roly-poly warmth that belies his words about Beau's mother: "Do you ever wish that she was dead?" he asks. Beau's answer is an incredulous "What!" but the cat is out of the bag.And we're off in a series of trials for Beau, who always expects the worst to happen.
Aster does allow Beau to reconnect with his now-grown childhood sweetie Elaine , but their coupling is a comic disaster set to Mariah Carey's "Always Be My Baby."The film's most ambitious sequence is an animated fantasy, created by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña , in which a troupe of forest players perform a play that suggests what Beau's life might have been as the bearded father of three sons.
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