Boyhood Review

Grade: A-
One-Liner: Was someone secretly filming my childhood?

If we're generalizing here, films can mostly be lumped into two categories — ones that make you feel something and ones that blow shit up. Boyhood is obviously the latter. But if there's any film that can't be lumped in with any other in its category, it's this masterpiece from director Richard Linklater.

Yes, they filmed it over 12 years, and yes, you get to see young Mason grow up before your eyes, but it's not the creative approach to filmmaking that really sets this movie apart. At its core, Boyhood is a coming of age story without the trite coming of age moments most films love to pour on.

There was no first kiss, no prom night, no weddings, and no funerals. Instead, Boyhood captured the snapshots of life that stand out in a person's mind from their childhood — talking to your dad about girls, going to the Harry Potter midnight book signing, and your first bad breakup.

Linklater, whose daughter Lorelei literally played my childhood twin as Mason's older sister Samantha, did an excellent job of letting his actors' real lives navigate the story. So as Ellar Coltrane (Mason) went through the struggles of his own parents' divorce in real life, so did Mason on the big screen.

His mom (played by Patricia Arquette) married and divorced a series of duds, ripping Mason from multiple lives he'd known and moving him across the state of Texas. His dad (played by Ethan Hawke) was a more endearing character, but his absence in Mason's life was palpable.

It was clear that few of the children in the film were genuine "child stars." They were devoid of the pomp and circumstance typically surrounding kid actors. No one was trying to shine or steal the spotlight. Instead, they seemed more concerned with their haircuts and friends, like normal kids are.

The 165 minutes did fly by as I desperately waited to see young Mason grow, and the most interesting part was that nothing he was doing was particularly monumental or noteworthy. The last 30 minutes of the film were the slowest, as I felt he had grown and impatiently waited to see if his story would be wrapped in a meaningful way. It eventually did, and the journey there was as much a trip down memory lane for the audience as it was for Mason.