Philadelphia Film Festival 2018: Peter Hedges's 'Ben Is Back'

Beautiful Boy, starring Timothée Chalamet, just arrived, and Ben Is Back stars Lucas Hedges. Peter Hedges, the leading man's father, directed the latter film and was there to introduce it at the Philadelphia Film Center (formerly the Prince Theater).

Crooked caper

The film starts with an intriguing premise but blows it by suddenly becoming a slow-burn thriller in its second half. It’s also driven by one of the silliest plot contrivances I can remember.

Hedges’s Ben Burns, an in-recovery opioid addict and drug dealer, shows up unannounced on Christmas Eve at his mother Holly’s (Julia Roberts) suburban New York home. Distrusted by his sister Ivy (Kathryn Newton) and stepfather Neal (Courtney B. Vance), Ben tries to win back his family's trust while still wrestling with addiction and trying to outrun his past misdeeds.

As its plot plays out over roughly 24 hours, the film shows a harrowing, believable representation of addiction. Hedges, a mainstay of PFF Centerpiece films the last three years (Manchester by the Sea; Lady Bird; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; and another one this year, Boy Erased) is quite believable as a struggling addict.

But his performance is overwhelmed by Roberts, who takes all the oxygen in most scenes. She gives a scenery-chewing performance which consists largely of her snapping at strangers, including a deeply weird moment where she angrily confronts a dementia-addled doctor. I spent most of the movie dreading there would be a scene where Holly charges into a drug den and berates the drug dealers into leaving her precious son alone (thankfully, there wasn't).

Most of the good stuff is in the film's first half, but its final hour, when it suddenly turns into a crime caper, is simply no good. It also doesn’t help that the entire inciting incident is based on a dastardly plan by a drug dealer that makes no sense.

The dealer robs the Burns home but leaves no ransom note or any other clue as to who took it or where he went. He and his cronies count on Ben, an active junkie, to solve the mystery and reach him just in time to carry out a high-risk drug deal he happens to have all set to go at 4am, Christmas morning. I can imagine much less convoluted master plans.

Newton, who also played Hedges's sister in Three Billboards, is impressive; between this and her turn in Blockers, her star is on the rise. Stage actress Rachel Bay Jones has a brief but heartbreaking turn as the mother of a teenager who died from his addiction.

Lost in translation

Hedges père, also a novelist and playwright, wrote What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and its 1993 movie adaptation. He previously directed two other films about awkward holiday family gatherings: 2003’s Pieces of April and the highly underrated 2007 Steve Carell film Dan in Real Life.

In a post-screening Q&A, the director discussed the scourge of the opioid epidemic, the culpability of drug companies, and gross racial inequities in the modern carceral state. Salient and important points all, except that aside from a couple of stray lines, there's hardly any of it in the movie.

Sure, it's a difficult topic. But Ben Is Back shows that Hollywood has yet to make a definitive statement about the opioid crisis.