Seldom has there been a film where the critic's opinions and its true quality diverge so seriously. "Boyhood" is empty because it lacks content and form.
It celebrates the ordinary and mediocrity instead of aiming at something extraordinary. As a result, it embraces nothingness and is in that sense deeply nihilistic and even depressing. Anybody with the same camera and some actors could have made this movie or (more likely) a better one.
Those who praise the film always point out the same circumstance (the only thing they can say) which is: This film is like "real life". I have to say: This is true (on the most superficial level imaginable). But I may ask: Is that a good thing? Is this, if film history has taught us anything, what a film should be? "Real life", according to Linklater, means a lifespan during which nothing happens. The Boyhood-experience is the equivalent of your experience waiting in line at the supermarket. Yes, this is the "real life" Linklater presents us. NOTHING HAPPENS IN THIS MOVIE! Nothing, no story, no interesting characters, just ordinary situations from "real life". Of course, there are films in which nothing or very little happens and they can be great (Tarkovsky's "Mirror", Antonioni's "L'avventura" or Tarr's "The Turin Horse" come to my mind), but you need ideas (you got that, Linklater?), you need a style or form which cannot be separated from the content, you need a capable director that can create a form of visual communication. Boyhood offers none of those things. The film gets praised especially by those who have never seen an art-house movie and mistake it for an art film. People are misled so easily. Boyhood is pure blankness, shallowness, superficiality, nothingness.
To praise Boyhood as a masterpiece is actually a slap in the face of all those directors who put a real effort into creating works of art that have real value.
Boyhood is in fact an anti-film in the sense that it stands against everything film should be - be it an artistic masterpiece or just an entertaining, fun movie. The film is neither a work of art nor entertaining. In that regard it can be called a non-film. It celebrates its own non-existence and drowns in its nihilism. I doubt this was Linklater's intention but it certainly is the result of what he created.
Be warned: This is NOT a drama. The movie is the opposite of a carefully constructed work of art. It's nothing but a re-enactment of memories, a collection of unmeaning scenes we may or may not know from our own lives (bowling, playing video games, reading Harry Potter etc.). I think it is only fair to ask: What is the point? I went to see this film having high hopes and (having read all the raving reviews) expecting a masterpiece from Richard Linklater, the director of the great "Waking Life". I liked the trailer which makes the movie look much more interesting than it actually is (actually, everything that "happens" in the movie is already in the trailer!). The basic idea of filming a boy growing into a young man during twelve years is interesting, yes, but sadly the film offers nothing more than that. This is not enough! Sadly, many critics seem to have liked the basic idea so much that to them it didn't even matter if the director would be able to make it interesting or not.
The film which is much too long follows an unstable family and focuses on the life of Mason, a character that has absolutely no interesting characteristics whatsoever. The intelligent viewer will be unable to connect with such a person. Mason walks through this film as if he was in a coma or half asleep; he has no ambitions. At some point he gets his first kiss, gets interested in photography (the ultimate art form for unimaginative lazy people) during high school (haven't we seen that already too many times?), goes to college at which point the film ends. I kid you not, this is the whole movie. The mother becomes a teacher at a local college and always seems to attract the wrong guys. The father is an unemployed loser who only talks about pop music and ends up being a square. Mason's sister (the director's daughter) grows up too and that's pretty much all you can say about her.
It is actually impossible to spoil this film because nothing happens (unless you consider the fact that Mason finishes high school a spoiler). Linklater completely fails to dramatize his ideas. As a result, following this movie feels like watching family home videos of a family you do not care about - just with better picture quality. Instead of using form (or content/drama) to make the film interesting, "Boyhood" refuses to do just that and therefore remains superficial.
You don't get to the essence of "real life" by only showing the surface of things. Everybody could do that!
It is really hard talking about this film because there isn't a single interesting character or scene in it. You just follow ordinary events in the lives of these people.