Filmed from 2002 to 2013, Boyhood depicts the childhood and adolescence of Mason Evans Jr. (Coltrane) from ages six to eighteen as he grows up in Texas with divorced parents (Arquette and Hawke).

In 2002, 6-year-old Mason Evans lives with his divorced mother, Olivia, and 8-year-old sister, Samantha, in a small town in Texas.

They share experiences such as playing video games and attending a midnight release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Olivia continues her education and is initially supportive of Bill's strict parenting style, which includes many chores for the children and an enforced shaving of Mason's long hair.

In 2009, Mason is bullied at school and playfully teased on a camping trip, but starts receiving attention from girls.

Olivia takes a position teaching psychology at college and moves in with Jim, a student and Iraq War veteran.

The following year, Mason and Sheena visit Samantha, who is attending the University of Texas at Austin, where they share their hopes and fears about college.

In 2013, towards the end of Mason's senior year in high school, he has a painful breakup with Sheena, wins the second place silver medal in a state photography contest, and is awarded college scholarship money.

Planning to sell the house and downsize, Olivia meets Samantha and Mason for lunch and asks them to sort through their possessions.

Later that year, as Mason prepares to leave for college, Olivia breaks down, disillusioned by how quickly life has passed.

According to Hawke, the discussion about the possibility of additional Star Wars films is "the only honest-to-god improvised moment in the movie".

[9] In consideration of the possibility that the actors' circumstances or availability might change over the extended period of production, Linklater also had observed that the film potentially could also have been named Motherhood, Fatherhood, etc.

[17] Hawke was amazed that the producers "still had their job" at the film's completion, despite "(having) to hide a couple hundred thousand dollars a year for over a decade while we slowly made this movie".

[12] Despite the risks, Linklater was allowed an unusual level of freedom with the production, never having to show IFC the work as it progressed.

This film was part of Peter Kujawski's efforts to distribute Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty and Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street outside the United States.

Its critical consensus reads, "Epic in technical scale but breathlessly intimate in narrative scope, Boyhood is a sprawling investigation of the human condition.

"[20] Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned Boyhood a score of 100 out of 100 based on 50 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

[citation needed] A collection of 25 French critiques on AlloCiné, including those from Le Monde and Cahiers du cinéma, indicates wide approval, with an average score of 4.0 out of 5.

[24] In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis stated that the film's realism was "jolting" and "so brilliantly realized and understated that it would be easy to overlook".

[29] Wai Chee Dimock, writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, compared Linklater's film with Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee's memoir, Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life.

[31] Michael Phillips, writing for the Chicago Tribune, lauded Arquette's "lack of pretense or affectation as a performer".

[36] Writer Joyce Carol Oates tweeted her support, saying: "It is rare that a film so mimics the rhythms and texture of actual life as Boyhood.

"[37] Poet and critic Dan Chiasson wrote in a contribution to The New York Review of Books: "This is a great film, the greatest American movie I have ever seen in a theater.

"[38] According to Canadian philosopher Howard Adelman, "[Boyhood] is Huckleberry Finn for the twenty-first century, for it is only Mason Jr. who retains his honesty, integrity and sense of decency throughout ... a masterful movie not to be missed.

Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan described it as "at best, OK" and one whose "animating idea is more interesting than its actual satisfactions".

Writing for The Atlantic, Imran Siddiquee noted: "While Linklater and the character of Mason can choose not to see it, dialogue about race is happening all around them and affecting their lives and experiences."

Siddiquee also took issue with the apparent absence of non-white characters, particularly Latinos: "In this tale of a white family living in a state that borders Mexico, isn't it strange that the only time they're shown truly interacting with a Spanish-speaking non-white individual is when they are saving them from a life of manual labor?

"[44] Teo Bugbee, of The Daily Beast asserted: "As a treatise on the essential vacuity of the white liberal male, Boyhood is a staggering achievement.

"[45] Jaime Woo, of The Daily Dot, took issue with critics who identified the film as a portrait of "normal" Americans, asking: "More than one reviewer noted how impressive it was to capture these "ordinary" Americans: In fact, Salon's Andrew O'Hehir used the word three times in his review.

"[101] Linklater told Hypable in July 2014 that he was planning a DVD/Blu-ray release through The Criterion Collection:[102] Yeah, we've got a ton of behind the scenes stuff.