I liked this style of movie making where you literally see the same boy and others growing up for the next twelve years. Yes this does have a tendency of being boring but if we look back into the last 12 years of our lives, I'm sure you will see a lot of boring moments and maybe some moments extremely dull. That's the way life is I guess.

My Movie Rating: 8 / 10

There is no doubt that this film gets pretty dull. The problem is that the narrative revolves not so much around Mason (Ellar Coltrane) as around the adults - Mason's somewhat hippyish parents and particularly his mother's terrible choices of partner. Indeed, what is surprising is how little we learn in the first half of the film about Mason himself - what makes him tick, how he sees the world. The film samples events in his life - such as his getting a severe haircut at the hands of his mother's latest beau - but these pieces are too fragmentary to add up to a portrait. There is therefore no psychological development, just a series of events in his external life involving his parents and (later on) his sometime girlfriends, in what appears a somewhat privileged, if disordered, upbringing. He seems to go from lacklustre child to boring young adult via uncommunicative emo, and at no point do we actually care about him in the slightest.

I will admit that on the technical side the film is very good. It is put together remarkably well and Mason's (and his sister's) growing up is almost seamless. And the adult actors are all superb. But since this film is not really about its nominal protagonist but about the people around him, it isn't in fact about 'boyhood' at all. A disappointment.

My Movie Rating: 3 / 10

Good movie, but after 1 hour I started feel bored.

My Movie Rating: 7 / 10

Other films have done what Boyhood does. The 2013 documentary American Promise follows two boys' entire education at a very prestigious school, the 2007 documentary You're Not Splitting Up My Family follows two boys' involvement with the care system over ten years, and the 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams follows two aspiring basketball players over their four years of high school. And once you take away the supposed uniqueness of how it was made, there just isn't a whole lot to this film. Also, the 2016 short film Boys is much better as an observational slice of all-American boyhood.

My Movie Rating: 6 / 10