film was more entrancing than its execution. And so, faced with being out of step with the vast majority of his critical peers, and not wanting to "rain on its parade," Turan stepped down from reviewing "Boyhood" and passed the baton to his colleague Betsy Sharkey, who ended up calling it "an extraordinarily intimate portrait of a life unfolding and an exceptional, unconventional film in which not much else occurs."

Given that the raves for "Boyhood" began to pour in the second the end credits rolled on its first screening at Sundance, perhaps it's not surprising that the small handful of dissents are, like Turan's, preoccupied with their own eccentricity. Of the 14 sentences Armond White devotes to "Boyhood," fully half of them are devoted to characterizing its audienceof the misogynist conditioning of a boy’s life.” Yes, and he’s also missed the passion, and conflict, and girl-crazy adrenaline-rushed joy of being a boy.

I would argue there's at least as much projection in Cusey and Judge's takes as in any of "Boyhood's" positive reviews: Cusey's distaste for Mason's "entitlement attitude," her vision of him becoming one of those kids currently in their parents’ basement... still waiting for something to come along and bring meaning to his life" ignores — willfully, one has to conclude — the extent to which "Boyhood" foregrounds his parents' financial difficulties and fast-forwards right past the restaurant job Mason works the summer before college. As for Judge's assumption that a partial freedom from "misogynist conditioning" is somehow incompatible with the "girl-crazy adrenaline-rushed joy