Filmed over 12 years with the same cast, this film is a groundbreaking story of growing up as seen through the eyes of a child named Mason, who literally grows up before our eyes.” ~ IMBD

Anatomy of my reviews: I write because I love movies so most of the time I see the movie I want to see and then review it.

Sometimes I can’t review films because I can’t write one word without giving the plot away (my daughters assure me this would be the case with Predestination).

Sometimes I know I’ll enjoy a movie more if I know I don’t need to review it and I can kick back and enjoy some big, dumb fun (so as soon as I have time I will see Into the Storm but don’t hold you breath for the review).

Sometimes I think I should see films because they are important — the first, the greatest, the newest, the comeback, the Oscar winning performance, the award-winning director, the never-been-done-before films.

Boyhood definitely falls into this category. It is groundbreaking.

However, it is not something that has never been done before. Michael Apted created the famous Seven Up! series, which touches base with a group of British children every seven years until they turned 49. It is by turns hilarious, sad, confronting and (dare I say it) a little bit monotonous. There are countless timelapse films on YouTube of people doing nothing, walking, growing hair – one man filmed his son and daughter for 15 seconds every week from birth until they were 14 years old.

However, those are real events and this is a story, written to illustrate and experience what we all share, to say something about the human condition and the small wonder that is a person.

To watch a fictional family work through the business of life and growing up is something new, something that took an enormous commitment from every person involved. To get actors of the calibre of Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke to commit to a 12-year project—without contracts—is astounding! Apparently Hawke even agreed to finish the film if anything happened to the writer and director, Richard Linklater. Mind you, these two have history—Linklater is the director of Hawke’s other well know periodic story – Before Sunset/Midnight/Sunrise.

The young stars – Mason, played by Ellar Coltrane and his sister Samantha, played by Linklater’s own daughter Lorelei – start out cute-ish and do what we all do, they grow. They become rebellious and awkward as they get on with living their lives. A persistent thought I kept having as I watched was how will what they have done affect their lives now? Did they, as six or seven year olds, have any notion of how much of themselves they were going to offer up to the celluloid gods?

I think there would have been an element of familiarity, even pseudo-family comfort in getting together each year to film a few scenes but it cannot have been easy. Apparently Lorelei wanted out around age 11, suggesting her character die but her father refused, saying that was not the movie he wanted to make.

I wish I’d known that going in.

There has been so very much in the press about this film and every critic seems to love it, most saying how deeply moved they were. That is usually shorthand for ‘tragic story’ so I kept anticipating that – circular saw blades are played with and solo long distance drives are taken. The stuff of parents’ nightmares and enough to keep me tense, maybe even missing some, to the more delicate nuances of some scenes, for the whopping 165-minutes running time. I can at least save you some stress. Nobody dies. Just as in real life, the near misses remain just that. Let yourself relax and follow the journey.

You don’t want the bumpers; life doesn’t give you  bumpers.” ~ Dad (played by Ethan Hawke), Boyhood

Metacritic, a website that aggregates reviews of films and give them an overall score, gives Boyhood a perfect score. Bloggers, TV, newspaper and magazine critics universally love it. Mothers with sons may find it difficult to watch and become quite emotional. Men will recognise themselves in the boy and I suspect anyone who remembers growing up will recognise at least some for the vignettes portrayed.

So why wasn’t I moved? Did I miss something amongst the relentless one-character-talking-to-another scenes?

I loved the final statement of the film and in it I recognised the purpose of the story but I kept asking myself if Linklater really needed almost three hours of running time to get to it? Yes, it is a noble experiment. Yes, it is touching to see the same actor growing and changing.

But is it entertaining? Not for me but I predict film school courses will be based on it and it will find its place in history.