Writer: Naseem Randhawa

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Watch this if you liked: "Before Sunrise" & "The Tree of Life"

The Good, the Bad and the Wonder Years:

It may have taken 12 years for filmmaker Richard Linklater to make "Boyhood", but be warned that the story isn't storytelling genius or a cinematic masterpiece. The movie has no stellar CGI-effects or a surprise twist ending too. What makes this movie perfect however, is the imperfectness of a very human and simple story about growing up and learning how relationships work in the world around you. Actor Ellar Coltrane plays the lead whom we follow and through this boy and his childhood, we often find ourselves reminiscing our own wonder years.

Put together by a series of seamless vignettes to document Coltrane's character and his family year by year, the film is punctuated by the MTV hit songs that were popular during that particular year, along with the Harry Potter book craze, Sega video game console; all things that many kids of the 80s and 90s grew up with.

Cinematically, the reason why this film works is because it's a breath of fresh air and the level of commitment the filmmaker and actors have delivered is amazing to see play out on screen. We are witnesses of the same bunch of people growing and aging to tell a story in this extended time lapse. Ellar Coltrane is far from being a great actor, but through his inexperience; from age 7 up to his teen years; we see something real, something believable; the innocence of being a child and the awkwardness of teenage puberty. In "Boyhood" it is not acting, but reacting. We also see Linklater's real life daughter, Lorelei Linklater grow up on screen. Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette age and get crow's feet and in the mere 165 minutes of the film, we come out feeling like we've known this family all our lives.

Trivia:

The movie was shot across 12 years and filmed for two weeks each year.

Cinema Online, 13 January 2015