This feels like Jack Kerouac reimagined for young adults facing a future that seems bleak, where homeownership is out of reach and jobs are scarce, and any illusions about what’s ahead have vanished. American Honey fits alongside films exploring economic hardship and neglect—like Dogville, Requiem for a Dream, and Parasite. However, while those movies showed creative filmmaking or a strong sense of purpose, Andrea Arnold's road movie gets lost in its own length. I was really excited to see this, especially considering the director’s previous work like Bird and Fish Tank, which felt perfectly paced and clear about their message. American Honey falls short because you can see Arnold’s skill is there, but it’s overshadowed by unnecessary padding. Sasha Lane does a wonderful job in her first role. She portrays Star with a genuine quality, without any forced acting; just a sense of survival, longing, and the hope that maybe this group of lost people will be better than what she's running from. The music is great too, really fun and energetic, reflecting the way these young people try to forget their problems by partying. But at 163 minutes, the film simply goes on for too long. After the first act, it’s clear what the movie is about: these kids use constant parties as a distraction from their generation's struggles, and the road trip becomes an escape from a country that doesn’t seem to have anything for them. Once that idea is established, there’s no reason to keep showing us more than another hour and a half. It seems like Arnold couldn't work out how to finish the romance between Star and Jake (Shia LaBeouf) sooner, so we're stuck watching repetitive scenes of scams, parties, and emotional ups and downs until she finally found an ending. The magazine crew itself is a form of exploitation, taking advantage of both the kids selling the products and the people buying them, and Arnold makes that very clear. But a movie about exploitation shouldn’t take advantage of the audience's time. What could have been a focused, powerful 100-minute look at these characters becomes an ordeal. By the time things wrap up, I had lost interest.

Source on TMDB