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Is 'Boyhood' This Year's 'Crash'? Or This Year's 'The Artist'?

In the last 24 hours, I've gone from feeling neutral-to-slightly-negative about Boyhood to more or less loathing it. I hate the term "overrated" but I can't think of another word to describe it. Hey, critics: How did this dumb movie win so many awards from critics groups? Does Richard Linklater have your kids in his basement duct-taped to a radiator? Have you all been hypnotized? Snap out of it! This'll help:

Yes, the movie has no plot and its characters are flat and it's visually boring and its theme is trite but IT TOOK 12 YEARS TO MAKE.

Given its status as the current frontrunner for the best picture trophy at this year's Oscars, we must look deep into our souls and ask whether Boyhood is going to be remembered as this year's Crash or this year's The Artist.

There are strong cases to be made for either argument. Consider the comparison to Crash. There was much angst when that flick took home the best picture trophy rather than Brokeback Mountain, a socially conscious film about the evils of sexually repressing gay cowboys. This year's Brokeback is obviously Selmaa socially conscious film about the evils of Lyndon Baines Johnson. That Boyhood, a movie I gave half-a-problematic, would triumph over such a monument to civil rights that received negative five problematics shows just how far we have to go as a culture.

However, as one of my Twitter followers noted, a better comparison might be The Artist:

Like BoyhoodThe Artist was met with critical overpraise because of its gimmick. (It's a silent movie! But we have talkies now! Cray-cray!) And it ended up winning best picture because the crop of movies nominated that year was exceptionally weak. It was the "consensus" choice in a year without a clear-cut favorite. That lack of a clear-cut favorite—the nonexistence of an obviously great film amongst the nominees—has been repeated this year. Boyhood's gimmick and its standing as a safe consensus choice means it has more than a passing resemblance to The Artist.

So which is Boyhood? I think I'm going to stick with Crash. If Linklater's film wins best picture, it'll only be a few years until it becomes a punchline. Somewhere, Paul Haggis is breathing a sigh of relief.