So far the movie has been voted the best picture of the year by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics Circle, New York Film Critics Online and the Boston Society of Film Critics.
Boyhood's director, Richard Linklater, has been hailed as best director by the same groups.
Last night, it won best movie, and Patricia Arquette best actress at the Golden Globes awards.
At this point, Boyhood seems sure to win Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director next year.
Doubts
Am I the only one who didn't think this was the bestest film of the year, or possibly the most wonderful movie of all time?
The idea behind Boyhood -- a longitudinal look over 12 years as a boy grows up -- appealed instantly to film audiences. What parent wouldn't want annual video scenes of his child's developing years? Who among us would not like an observation of his own journey from childhood to maturity?
Richard Linklater certainly deserves a lot of credit for originating this idea and making it into a movie. I was very eager to see Boyhood and went as soon as it showed up in my neighborhood.
Afterward, though, I had a nagging sense of disappointment with the piece, which I have been turning over in my mind ever since.
Here are some of my reservations about the film.
-- The boy in Boyhood is cute and winsome, but he doesn't DO anything. The first time his family moves out of their home, he watches, passively, as his best friend bicycles behind the car, frantically waving goodby. He remains passive pretty much throughout the film. The only exception I recall is when the boy learns that his father has sold a car that the boy hoped would be passed to him. Even in the movie's last scenes, when the boy goes to college, he falls in with his roommate and the roommates' friends; it is clear that the he has found his people, but, again, he just follows along with what the others do.
This is not so strange in real life. Many children are quiet and more observant than active. Unfortunately, this is not the stuff of drama.
-- The title character's passivity requires the other cast members to dance around frantically, creating situations that wash over the boy. The mother moves her children from place to place many times, trains for and takes up a teaching job and marries two unsuitable husbands. The boy's father, a Peter Pan figure, drops in and out their lives, acting like the prankish, fun parent who isn't particularly reliable.
-- The boy's sister (played with much more interest by the director's daughter, Lorelei Linklater) acts out, pouts, whines and is more involved in moving the plot than the title character. Why couldn't Linklater have trained the camera on her and called the film "Girlhood?" Why is she the child in the background?
-- The boy's father's trajectory strikes me as plain unbelievable. At the start of the movie, he is a hip, irresponsible divorced father with a classic muscle car. Over the course of the movie, he goes back to school, becomes an actuary (Ethan Hawke an actuary? really?), marries a woman from a strait-laced religious background, has another child and buys a minivan. It's true that even adults grow up and change, but this transformation is so extreme that it strains credulity.
I really, really wanted to like Boyhood. I was drawn to the idea of seeing a child grow into his adult body and develop his adult persona. With this film, we got the first but not the second.
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