'Boyhood' one year later

What a strange feeling it is to have what feels like the entire world telling you that, by having a different opinion, you are a stupid jerk with an ulterior motive.

This is what happened to me July 17 when I posted my 2.5-star review of Richard Linklater's "Boyhood." The Internet was, well, not pleased; At that point, the film had a 100 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, perfection that's extremely difficult to come by. This is not because few movies are that unanimously acclaimed, although that's true. It is because subjectivity is baked into the consumption of art.

So it was awfully dispiriting when the response to my review of "Boyhood," which at the very least articulated why I didn't feel the movie was successful, mostly consisted of people accusing me of trolling for the purpose of page views. Never mind that the review was marked "Originally published during the Sundance Film Festival," evidence that the opinion was formed in January 2014, without any sense of what others thought. Had I posted the review to Rotten Tomatoes at the time, the 100 percent never would have happened-and maybe neither would the hubbub.

Instead, Jimmy Kimmel attempted to demonstrate to Linklater-the writer/director responsible for one of my all-time favorite movies, "Before Sunrise"-that I was a buffoon.

I can think of little that invalidates the job of a critic more than the notion that certain perspectives are inherently wrong. Now, if you don't defend your point, that's a problem. But maybe a person who differs from the majority simply sees things differently, and that's why, for the time being at least, there isn't (and shouldn't be) just one critic whose opinion is taken as fact.

I watched "Boyhood" again this weekend so the movie would be fresher in my mind in advance of awards season. And I say this not to fuel a fire or make people upset or generate page views: I felt exactly the same about the movie, an ambitious concept with a C-plus execution. And I remain puzzled that so, so many people out there, at least the most vocal ones, find the movie so extraordinary.

I do not find it observant at all. It unfolds as exactly the way it was made: We spend a little time with the characters every year, and then jump ahead to the next year when filming resumes. What we see does not bring us close to any of them. On second viewing, I am still struck by how little we actually learn of Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his older sister Samantha (Linklater's daughter Lorelei), their mom (Patricia Arquette), or their dad (Ethan Hawke), who floats in and out of the picture. After spending more than a decade with this family, we don't feel a part of it. Linklater captures neither one person's perspective nor a detailed view of the entire family's. Rather, we see melodramatic, cliché scenes with an alcoholic stepdad (Marco Perella) and a number of adolescent rites of passage (bowling without bumpers, lying about past hookups) that do not lead to lessons or revelations. "Boyhood" is not an accumulation of experience but a sort of obvious, coming-of-age hopscotch, largely detached from the feeling and impact of really being there. 

I realize that the movie is attempting to suggest certain universality in the human experience. As I wrote in my original review, we've all been there as someone with an OK voice and equal guitar playing skills belted out Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here." We've all had a moment when we were obnoxious to our parents and angry with a sibling. In some ways "Boyhood" shows how you don't really know what moments are going to matter until later. But the nuance, and the truth, and the lift-your-heart-up-and-crush-it-and-lift-it-up-again sensation of actual life (especially between the ages of 6-18) is not there on the screen.

Double the running time of "Boyhood," fill it with the transformative moments that we all carry with us from arguably the most impactful years of our lives and the film could soar as truly large, universal and insightful, but also intimate and resonant. I know studios aren't excited to release a 5-hour movie, and people aren't looking to watch one. In theory, I'm not either. But I feel to praise "Boyhood" because of its concept rather than a close look at how well it actually taps into its portrait of life and growing up and family is to give it credit the finished product hasn't earned.

I love reflections on time and identity. I think about the past more than I intend to. After seeing "Boyhood" twice, it continues to strike me as an inspirational poster blanketing a movie largely free of hope, choices, regrets, loneliness, disappointment, mistakes, adaptations, joy and pain, without the day-to-day mania that causes those feelings and realizations to be flattened.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't wonder how many people who love "Boyhood" are simply transposing their own feelings onto the movie's relatively blank canvas and turning it into something the movie doesn't make of itself. That's how I see it. You can disagree. But, please, let's at least agree that a world in which there is only one acceptable opinion about a piece of art defeats a big part of the reason we consume it in the first place: To make up our own mind.