Review of Boyhood (2014) by Antonbell — 25 Feb 2015

So, I am an avid movie fanatic. I love pretty much all movies, I haven't a specific genre or preference when it comes to film. I had heard much about "Boyhood," and since the Oscars had "snubbed" it, I desperately wanted to see it (in no small part to critics claiming that this is the "Pulp Fiction" of the Oscars.

..one of my favorite films). I expected to love it. I expected to walk away from "Boyhood" with a respect for Linklater and Arquette. I expected to have been moved. None of this happened. I have since read that this film is "boring.

" I am so seldom bored that the thought is almost foreign to me. No longer. Boring doesn't even begin to describe it. It is stale and trite. Yeah, I said trite. Doesn't anyone remember "Before Sunrise?" Linklater is having the exact same conversation he had in that film only now it's Mason having it with his girlfriend in Texas instead of Ethan Hawke having it in Paris.

Please, someone give Richard a copy of "Being and Time" so that we don't need to suffer his existential crisis again. The ending lines are precious. "I thought there'd be more," bemoans Olivia.

Gimme a break. How many times have we heard *that*? And the icing on the cake, Mason, high with his new college buddies..."You know how you're supposed to seize the moment...? Maybe the moment is supposed to seize you.

" Wow. Now there are some pearls right there. I get it...he's attempting to explore the "now" we all chase...but anyone who has taken philosophy 101 has thought about this. It's adolescent drivel.

He's attempting to explore the relationship of time to the audience. Whatever. There are better ways in which to do that, I'm sure. What they are, I have no idea...I'm not a film maker. But this film was such a massive disappointment, I really cannot be bothered to try to come up with a something better.

I hated the characters, for none of them were properly developed. Arquette's performance was dry at best. I thought she was almost as painful to watch as the actor playing Mason. So, what you end up with is a plotless film, with no character development, and an aging director desperately chasing this moment he purports should be chasing him.

It's a catastrophically bad film. It's symptomatic of a society so muddled with narcissism that we are romanticizing simplicity to a fault. Yeah. Don't waste your time.