Review of Boyhood (2014) by Tjosephubert — 12 Feb 2015

This movie is completely, utterly, boring. There's literally nothing that happens. It's about a boy living an extremely dull and cliched life. There's virtually no drama that happens throughout the entire movie, and the drama that is presented is still quite listless and unimportant. In other words, this movie is about as plot-less as a movie can get. It took twelve years to film, and yet, those years span by quickly and dully, one event after the other, with no point or order, just chaotic and random. But what makes the movie so dull was the main character.

In the movie, there is nothing bad happens to the main character, nothing to make you connect with him. There's nothing life changing. In fact, the three biggest "bad" things that happen to him are that his mother can't find "the right guy" (after divorcing his father, she marries her college professor who turns out to become a drunk, and then she marries one of her own college students, who turns out to have mental stability problems due to him serving in the military; both of which she ends up divorcing as well), and his father sells the car that he had thought would be his when he turned sixteen, and his girlfriend cheated on him, which resulted in their relationship ending. Other than this, nothing happens. He literally goes through life showing as little emotion as possible, just floating by, as though he was in a coma, or constantly tired.

So, finally, after two hours and thirty mintutes, you come towards the end of the movie. The "boy" is now an adult who has graduated high school and who is going to be going to college. Upon him packing his last things, his mother breaks down saying that there's nothing more that is going to happen with her life. That her life has just been a series of events: her having her children, her divorcing her husband, her raising her children, her marrying a man, divorcing him, raising her kids some more, marring her college student just to divorce him as well, and finally, her sending first her daughter to college, and then her son. Then she concludes with saying that what comes next is, "[her] funeral." To this, the boy, replies that she's off by forty years, "or something." Then she says that, "[she] expected there to be more." The movie then cuts to him driving on the road to college.

When he finally arrives at college, he meets his new roommate, who is friendly and invites him to go hiking with his girlfriend and another friend (who is also a girl). When Mason (the main character) sees that she's pretty, he decides that he'll go. Before he goes, his new roommate hands him a hallucinatory mushroom and says that by the time they reach the mountains, it will have an effect. It then fast forwards to them walking to the mountains and we see that Mason and the new girl are getting along very well. Then it cuts to them sitting and chatting. Across the distance, he sees his roommate yelling into the wind, and he begins to talk to this new girl, named Nicole, about how we need to, "seize the moment." Nicole replies with saying, "I think moments seize us," and it shows Mason thinking for a moment, and then it cuts to the end credits.

I think what bothered me the most about the film was the fact that, despite it having no order, there was a point, but it wasn't that great of one. Mason, who lived his entire boring life on coasting mode is finally forced to see that if he keeps doing this, he will end up like his mom––just living, but not truly alive in the sense of being satisfied with life. The point is that we need to let the moments seize us, and we need to live. Yet, what made this theme so irrelevant was the fact that there was hardly a moment for him to have ever seized! There was no bad, barely any good, nothing that would have made is life have any significant meaning. By the end of the movie, you ask yourself, "Is my life really this boring?" And do you know what my answer was? "No, there's more drama in mine.".

In conclusion, if you want to see a long movie that drags on and on about a boy just living his life, then you'll love this movie. Even though it had a theme presented at the end, in my opinion, it just wasn't enough to save the movie overall. It is sad really, because it was such an ambitious project. But by creating such a dull life where nothing happens, I feel that they wasted those twelve years, because in all actuality, most people's lives are far more chaotic and show signs of actual character development due to things that happen, both good and bad, in their lives. That's what this movie failed to do: deliver on experiences that are worth watching. What's left instead is dull, listlessness that fails to satisfy someone who wanted to be entertained. I wanted to see sadness, hopelessness, as well as extreme elation and happiness. To see someone grow into a great person despite and because of circumstances. What I got was boy coasting his entire life though a movie that has a run time far too long.