Richard Linklater's Boyhood

Boyhood is a gimmicky and depressing film, one of the most depressing I have ever seen.  Those of us who grew up in lower-middle-class environments and suffered what the children in this film suffer from authority figures -- parents, teachers, et al. -- find it hard to believe that even going to college will save these kids, especially since the parents insist they stay in-state in order to save on tuition! 

The gimmick is that this film was filmed for a month or so a year over twelve years.  Why this is better than using different actors to portray the kids at different ages is quite unclear, effective only as a publicity gimmick.  Certainly things could have been done to show the passage of time and its influence in other ways than playing period pop songs and changing haircuts. The family moves around Texas a fair amount, drunken husbands abuse the kids, the father shows up every other week-end, the teachers lecture kids that they need to do what the teachers tell them if the kids want to ever get jobs, the Harry Potter series and Kurt Vonnegut are the only books even briefly referred to.  The son does aspire somewhat to photography, so there may be some hope for him (if he can stay off drugs); the daughter is more or less lost in the shuffle.