of being a boy" — well, that's between him and his therapist.

It strains credulity to argue that the overwhelmingly white and male makeup of the film critical profession has nothing to do with the uniformity of "Boyhood's" reviews, especially given the feeling-all-the-feels quality of some of the more breathless raves. But that line of argument ironically erases the voices of critics who found their way into "Boyhood" without being white or male: the New York Times' Manohla Dargis and Grantland's Wesley Morris, to name only two of its most eloquent appraisers.

Although I fit the demographic profile, I found myself identifying much more with Mason's parents than Mason himself, or rather, seeing myself in their place: As a parent, my experience of "Boyhood" was much less about being Masonthan watching him grow up, observing the changes in his body and his voice as a boy became a young man. One of the hoariest, and truest, clichés of parenting is that time moves more quickly than you can ever imagine. "Boyhood" is that process compressed into a manageable span: "It Goes So Fast: The Movie."

Kenneth Turan has his own hypotheses about why he didn't fall for "Boyhood": He's lost his taste for coming-of-age movies; he's always been cool to Linklater's work. But I wish he had reviewed it, and not only because I think critical uniformity is bad for the profession. While there's no question that "Boyhood" will remain one of the best-reviewed movies of the year, reducing the reviews to an aggregate score — especially a