Starring Hugh Grant, Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Rachel Weisz, Victoria Smurfit.
Directed by Paul and Chris Weitz.
Will (Grant) is a 38-year old bachelor living the good life in London. He has no job, living off royalties
from a famous Christmas tune his father wrote years earlier. He spends his day watching TV, using
his specialty coffee machine, sipping German beer and tooling around town in his silver Audi coupe.
No man is an island? Will's goal in life is to be an island. He occassionally interacts with the rest
of society, searching out interested women to bed and then get rid of. An old flame sets him up
with a single mother, who finds him wonderful because he gets along well with her young child,
gratefully has sex with him, and tearfully breaks it off with him because she doesn't want a committment,
just before Will wants to do it himself. It is Will's perfect relationship. He decides that he has to
pursue single mothers.
He decides to pose as a single dad with a 2-year-old son, and joins a single parent support group.
He fancies one of the mothers there, but soon meets up with Marcus (Hoult), a nerdy 12-year-old son
of Fiona (Collette) a suicidal, vegetarian hippie. Marcus discovers Will doesn't have a son,
but decides to hang out with him anyway, first as a prospective man for his mom, but later as a
pseudo-father figure who at least has an understanding of the torment he receives at school.
Will meets a successful single mother Rachel (Weisz) and for the first time actually has real
feelings for a woman, and turns to Marcus for help.
Directed by the brother team who directed American Pie of all things, About A Boy
is a very witty, often surprising romantic comedy. Romantic comedies, especially ones featuring
children, often trowel on the sentiment and formula, but this film does neither. It is based on a novel
by Nick Hornsby, who has written, among other things, High Fidelity. Like that book/movie,
About A Boy is about a middle-aged man who doesn't want to stop being a boy, avoiding
committment and involvement with other people like the plague. When
asked to be the godfather of his former girlfriend's young daughter, he declines and says "I really
am this shallow." The story also deviates from the normal romantic comedies, where boy meets
girl, boy and girl hate each other, and then boy and girl fall madly in love. About A Boy
doesn't even come close to that formula, moving in surprising and quite enjoyable directions.
And a good number of the jokes are laugh-out-loud funny.
Hugh Grant made a career playing the lovable, way-too-cute cad, and it started to grow annoying.
But first with Bridget Jones Diary and now here, he has tossed away cute and has played
two self-absorbed manipulators with an edge, and he shows he has considerable ability as an
actor. Despite the character's selfishness, the script and Grant keep Will a sympathetic character.
The young actor Nicholas Hoult is another reason for the film's success. He convincingly embodies
the nerdish outsider who is constantly picked on at school, and never strays into cutesy. Because
of his mom's depression, Marcus has to assume some adult responsibilities, and several times he
is the adult to Will's child. Toni Collette is convincing and sympathetic as the mother
trying to make ends meet and overcome her severe depression, and Rachel Wiesz charming as
the single mother who sees something in Will.
About A Boy is about as far from Star Wars as you can get, and it is not only an alternative
to watching light sabres and jedi knights, but it's an entertaining and very-well made comedy well
worth seeing.
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