Review of Boyhood (2014) by Hockeymaniac87 — 14 Oct 2014

I saw this movie with my girlfriend on the account that the concept of it was very intriguing, but I spent over 3/4 of the movie curled up in a ball groaning, yelling, hyperventilating, and biting my arm hair because it was overwhelmingly painful to watch. (I do that at bad movies.) THE CONCEPT IS GREAT! Good job! That's it! Like others have said about it, if I wanted to watch a movie about life I'd strap a cardboard box to my body and view things through it like it was a TV set. We all enjoy reliving experiences outside of our own life, like in driving games when you decide you want to actually drive the speed limit and use your turn signal, BUT IT GETS BORING REAL QUICK! This movie is not only extremely boring, but inconceivably pointless. "Oh but they had abusive step dads!! That's dramatic!" The first step dad spent 5 minutes in one scene talking about chores and overacting his drunkenness. In another scene, the main character talked about why he didn't like Facebook for ten minutes. The acting is atrocious across the board, except for when Ethan Hawk plays a more respectable middle aged dad towards the end. Every line was forced and seemingly read off of a cue card written from a script that I feel like one of my old depressed Navy friends never finished.

There is literally only one scene worth mentioning that can be considered well written: The first time the main character comes home late as a teen, he arrives at a small party that his mom and new (second) step dad are having. The step dad says "Do you know what time it is?" At this point the viewer believes that there's going to be a fight, but when the main character says that it's sometime after midnight, the step dad says "Happy birthday." OF 3+ HOURS of horrible writing, THAT ONE SCENE is the only thing remotely well written and heartfelt!

People, I'm doing this as a public service because I spent 20 minutes of the movie googling on my phone why this film got good reviews. Don't be roped in by this nonsense. They did a great job taking 12 years to film something with all the same actors, I'll give them that. Unfortunately, they couldn't time travel forward to see how horrible those actors would become.

Do yourself a favor and spend twelve years with an actual human instead of Boyhood. It will probably be way more interesting and will seem a lot less shorter than this movie.