Review : Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" is a worthy sprint through adolescence.

"Coming-of-age" is a genre in film that is often dismissed as being too facile, but has more variations than what we usually surmise. In American cinema specifically, we have the kind that John Hughes served with generous helpings of humor coupled with disarming candor (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off), the kind that John Singleton showcased with such sensitivity, starkness and cognition (Boyz N the Hood) and the kind that was brutally, uncomfortably real and dour, the perverse sort that made everyone descry the obvious talents of Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale).

Which brings us to Richard Linklater, the crackerjack who has shaped a reputation of being the modern master of the genre, whose Dazed and Confused doggedly solidified that assertion. And the good news is, Boyhood, while not being his best, is certainly a doozy experiment that is emotionally productive.

It's wondrous for the umpteenth time how Linklater cheekily manages to find allure in the ordinaries of life, in our conversations, hushed and yelled, the exhibition of our suppressed emotions, and how in the end we are only a minuscule part of a larger cosmos. Observing a boy from the ages of seven to eighteen, scrutinizing his conduct in a life he never chose as he grows up is a figurative, audacious move, and who better to do this than Linklater? Time is his muse. And time has never looked so benign in any film of his.

The approach is casual. The conversations invoke an overpowering sense of deja vu, riddled with dry, throwaway humor and are nailed with an unassuming earnestness that is hard to define. Really, it's a skin Linklater is comfortable walking around in, and he hurtles through twelve years without missing a beat. His Mason is a figure of familiarity, perhaps because he is, in many ways, a specimen that represents each and every one of us, and that makes Boyhood an engaging chronicle. We are looking at us, a more realized version of ourselves in a film that aims for nothing more except bringing to us a picture of what lies beyond what we see in the mirror.

However, Boyhood also feels like a rushed film. I only wish it wasn't so eager to make Mason grow up, and then slacken the pace so that the "childhood" part seemed like a blaze in a reasonably long film. But this is only a minor niggle. Cramming adolescence in a film is never a cinch, especially in one that has been in the making for a little over a decade, and, rationally speaking, there are going to be loose ends that were forsaken at some point. Linklater's directorial flourishes are completely absent as well, giving the film its plain vanilla look. He was never one who would be remembered for his skill in handling a camera. But I wonder, would Boyhood have been the same if Linklater's expressive touches were present? It's a document of an ordinary soul, would visual artistry have killed it or enhanced it?

The selling point of the film, the gimmick that has irreversibly glued itself to it, will place it in my memory for a long time. It's an experiment of towering warmth, even though it doesn't seek to tell a story. It's anything but philosophical, more willing to talk about life than find meaning in it. And, remarkable as it seems, a surprisingly simple film.

On his excursion through adolescence, Linklater's Boyhood is a collage of the little moments he saw as he whizzed past them.