The plot of Boyhood is all in its title. Through the 2 hour and 40 minute run time, you watch a boy named Mason grow up. There’s no single major event or expansive story arc. It’s just modern day life.

The movie is more or less a documentary in terms of scope, following Mason from about age 6 to age 18. The big buzz around the production was director Richard Linklater’s idea to cast kids he could use for a 12 year long production. For two weeks or so a year, the cast and crew would meet up and film some more. Linklater would often ask Ellar Coltrane (who plays Mason) what he was up to and integrate some of it into the movie. This leads to an interesting visual change every time the movie moves to another major scene…the progress and age of the characters and surroundings is always true, despite being a fictional story.

It’s a daring filmmaking idea that paid off. Linklater is incredibly lucky to find a boy who would stick with, and pull off holding up his project.  In all the promotion I saw, it was always Ellar and never Lorelei Linklater (who plays his sister Samantha) which I thought was really odd. She did the same thing he did and is a very important supporting character. The other big names in the movie are Ethan Hawke (Dad) and Patricia Arquette (Mom) which leads to my biggest quibble of the movie.

The acting can be really uneven. The only constant is Ethan Hawke who delivers a solid performance in every scene he’s in. Finding really good child actors is really hard so I’m willing to let more slide with them. Ellar and Lorelei are usually good, but there are some terrible kid actors in some scenes. I have to say, I have no idea why Arquette won an Oscar for best supporting actress. There’s way too many instances where she’s terrible, it isn’t until the end where I thought she really settled in. Always sounded like she’s trying to act for most of the movie. She’s can’t yell worth a damn too, whenever she did it cracked me up.

I found Boyhood to be an interesting movie, but I doubt I’ll ever watch it again. Once through Mason’s childhood is enough more me.