This isn't awful. It's just completely, utterly, offensively pointless. That Linklater thought this was worth investing 12 years in baffles me. Even more baffling is that so many people think it's the best movie of the year. Yeah, these are the normal, mundane, cliche'd, run-of-the-mill experiences and conversations most of us have growing up. So why do we need a movie to reflect them? (particularly one that goes out of it's way to be plotless?) Because it's "insightful"? Tell me, what f***ing insights did you gain watching this movie that you didn't already know? It appears that most of the fawning praise heaped on this 3-hour pile is due to the over-hyped gimmick of using the same child actors over the whole 12 years. Because that's the first thing everyone mentions when describing the film. But is it really that impressive? How does the filming-for-12-years gimmick say anything about the quality of the actual finished product? It's just a silly gimmick used to disguise the fact that this is just another mind-numbingly useless coming-of-age film. And it appears the whole world fell for it. Yep, Linklater played you for suckers.