Boyhood is the most recent film by Richard Linklater starring Ellar Coltrane as Mason, Patricia Arquette as his mother, Ethan Hawke as his father and Lorelei Linklater as Mason’s sister Samantha. Boyhood as a practice or a study in methodology is extremely interesting. Director, Richard Linklater films a boy and his progression through his childhood. We follow the growth of Mason, a child from a broken family. Through the use of music from that period and Mason’s mother’s failed and doomed relationships, you can track Mason’s life.
Overall, I think that without knowing the background of this film, it fails to deliver. The story, in my opinion is too fluffy. There is no real drama. Perhaps I am a cynic and jaded by the many emotional films and melodramas of my youth, but where is the struggle. Where is the true painful agony that we associate with childhood? There are too many cliché moments between the baseball games, underage drinking and sex. I came into this film expecting some new revelation or view of childhood and what I was left with was an apathetic view of a film from which I was expecting great things.
The story is just bland. I don’t know if I feel a sense of disconnect because I am female and it connects more to men. I may receive a lot of backlash from posting this review but ask yourself this: When I separate the background knowledge I have of the filming of this movie, do I still think it is as good? My answer is a strong and loudly echoing into the void NO.
