Best Boy, is the fourth feature length film from Montreal based filmmaker Jesse Noah Klein, where following the death of their father, a family convenes a the family home where their mother reveals a notarized letter to be read following the original will reading. In it, the father offers up $100,000 to one of his three children if they win the “Best Boy” competition. 

The contest was to see who amongst the children, Lawrence (Aaron Abrams), Phillip (Caroline Dhavernas) and Eli (Marc Bendavid), was most deserving of his affection by pitting them against each other in feats of strength and commitment to best the others no matter what it takes.

There are several contests, and each of the children win one of the first three. Throughout, the scars (both visible and emotional) their father left on them become more evident. Their mother, enjoying her moment to be the games master (complete with viking helmet and cape),  grins manically watching her children literally almost kill each other vying for the briefest amount of parental love. 

Watching Best Boy is watching three siblings know exactly how to get under the skin of one another in ways only the closest people to us can ever do, all in the messed up name of family. Seeing them each come close to actual self reflection but then instead doubling down is painful watch, especially as they are each others biggest triggers for their various issues. Abrams, Dhavernas and Bendavid are each terrific, and it’s believable both that they grew up together and now can barely stand to be in the same room with one another, and doing so reveals a real threat of explosive rage and violence. 

In the end, hard lessons are learned, the kind that can only be faced by looking truth squarely in the face and accepting what it gives you. Sometimes the trauma is so deep you just need to burn everything to the ground in order to start again. 

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Best Boy