Review of Boyhood (2014) by Ollie G — 01 Apr 2016

I really wanted to love this one, and I fully expected to too. Unfortunately- I didn't. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty to love here, but I'm not at all convinced that this film comes close to equaling the sum of its parts.

The performances are great, with Ethan Hawke's 'Dad' reminding me of a similar performance by Mark Ruffalo in 'The Kids' Are Alright'. Arquette steals the show though and her character is easily my favourite thing about this film. It was completely realistic, nuanced, and human and was a truly breathtaking dramatic performance.

Unfortunately, I was not so impressed with the character of Mason- it's hard to fault the actor here as he is really just a young boy turning into a young adult and that is an undeniably real thing that happened and that you can see with your own eyes, however, the way that the character was written didn't impress me at all. There's simply nothing particularly interesting about Mason's life and, as the film resolves around it, that's not a good sign. I found myself constantly wanting the story to get back to his Mum or Dad and everything else just meandered along for me.

There's still plenty of great moments but the film is almost three hours long and those moments are few and far between. Sure, I get that this is a realistic execution of, what is a brilliant concept, but you can't fall back on the concept and let that dictate how the film progresses.

Ultimately, what I enjoyed was what I felt the film had earned- Patricia Arquette earned my attention with her fabulous performance but I can't say the same about most of the film. Was I a young boy once? Yes,. Are some of the moments in this film similar to moments that I've experienced growing up? Sure. Is any of that enough to make 'Boyfhood' a particularly special film? No.