Boy Swallows Universe review: Down and out in Brisbane
Netflix's limited series piles on heavy drama and harrowing situations
Early on in Boy Swallows Universe, which premieres January 11 on Netflix, 13-year-old Eli Bell breaks down in sobs at the end of a very rough week. When his stepdad asks him why, Eli sputters, “I don’t know! I’ve just got a whole lot of tears inside me. I can’t help it.”
It’s smart of him to practice crying now, because, as we’ll come to find out, Eli has a lot of rough days ahead of him. A run-in with a school bully and a caning from the vice principal is only the tip of the iceberg. Over the seven episodes of this Netflix limited series, our young Job will endure a parade of harrowing situations—domestic abuse, bodily mutilation, drug addiction, a car crash, terminal illness, and murder, to name just a few. By the closing scene, I’d lost count of how many violent deaths Eli had witnessed.
So it might surprise you to know that the show also evokes everything from Home Alone to Shameless to Degrassi to Moonrise Kingdom to Spotlight. These wild tonal shifts mirror the fractured thought patterns of a traumatized mind—which would be fascinating, if it seemed like the series were doing it on purpose.
Based on Trent Dalton’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, Boy Swallows Universe unfolds over the latter half of the 1980s in the suburbs of Brisbane, Australia. Eli (Felix Cameron) and his family—his mom, Frankie (Phoebe Tonkin); his big brother, Gus (Lee Tiger Halley); and his stepdad, Lyle (Travis Fimmel)—are living on the raggedy edge of poverty. Frankie is on the mend after Lyle helped her kick a nasty heroin habit, but that doesn’t stop him from secretly dealing on the side to make ends meet. And though Gus hasn’t spoken a word in years, he and his brother share a ride-or-die bond.
As for Eli, he’s the kind of precocious, talkative kid that’s a favorite of writers everywhere—one gifted with an overactive imagination, a keen sense of observation, and the ability to go toe-to-toe with even the most fearsome grownups. And like Arya Stark and Anne Shirley before him, Eli developed these skills in order to survive a world that, at best, ignores him and, at worst, wants him dead.
After Lyle’s crappy drug-dealing chops land him in hot water—and Frankie in prison—the brothers are sent to live with their absentee father, Robert (Simon Baker). Alas, his unchecked alcoholism means that it’s his sons who wind up doing the parenting. While Gus wants them to keep their heads down lest their lives get even worse, Eli is out for justice.
But that’s hard to come by when the local police are in cahoots with a pair of bad guys so cartoonish that they make Dr. Evil look subtle: Tytus Broz (Anthony LaPaglia), a Colonel Sanders–esque millionaire who runs a prosthetic-limb factory; and Ivan Kroll (Christopher James Baker), a cold-blooded cartel enforcer with a mutilated face and a passion for violence.
As misery piles on top of misery, Boy Swallows Universe becomes increasingly excruciating to watch. After a few episodes, we found ourselves developing a trauma response of our own; every time Eli had a nice day, our shoulders started to tense as we braced for the inevitable fall. At other times, the show shifts gears to slapstick zaniness, treacly sentimentality, or magical realism, grating against the heavy drama. (Are we supposed to think that Robert crashing around his house in a drunken stupor is hilarious or horrifying? The show sure hasn’t decided.)