About A Boy

About a Boy, based on the novel by Nick Hornby, is really about two boys, Will (Hugh Grant), a thir­ty­ish sex­ist unem­ployed lout who lives off of song roy­al­ties from his father, and Mar­cus (Nicholas Holt), a twelve-year-old just try­ing to make it through school help his depressed mother Fiona (Toni Col­lette) be happy. Will, who has no job, wan­ders through life know­ing that he’s the coolest per­son in the world. Are nor­mal peo­ple with­out jobs able to live in fab­u­lous apart­ments, drive Audis, and eat out at expen­sive restau­rants? As he might say, not bloody well likely. Will lives off of the prof­its of “Santa’s Super Sleigh”, a Christ­mas song writ­ten by his father decades pre­vi­ous. Will men­tions that his father strug­gled for years to cre­ate another hit, but that all he was remem­bered for was a Christ­mas song. I got the feel­ing that Will was envi­ous of his father, since at the rate Will’s going, at least his father is remembered.

Will stum­bles across the notion that after dat­ing fab­u­lous women for years, that in the end they all want com­mit­ment from him, some­thing that he’s not freely will­ing to give to them. But divorced women with chil­dren just want to date, and if they have to dump you, it’s their child, or their ex-husband, or “it’s not you, it’s me”. How could any­one have missed this untapped font of non-commitment?

He begins attend­ing SPAT, Sin­gle Par­ents Alone Together, and meets a young widow who is friends with Fiona, who’s the mother of Mar­cus, who was also in a film with Kevin Bacon (just kid­ding). After an out­ing to the park with a heavy loaf of bread and liv­ing through a rather hor­ren­dous sit­u­a­tion later the same evening, Mar­cus wants Will to date Fiona so he can “help her be happy again”. Will doesn’t want to help any­one be happy but himself.

Star­ring:
Hugh Grant, Nicholas Hoult, Rachel Weisz, Toni Col­lette
Directed By:
Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz
Release Date:
May 17, 2002
MPAA Rat­ing:
PG-13 for brief strong lan­guage and some the­matic ele­ments.
Dis­trib­u­tors:
Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures Dis­tri­b­u­tion
3.5 Stars

A dance begins between Will and Mar­cus, with both attempt­ing to make the other a bet­ter per­son. They nat­u­rally suc­ceed (this is Hol­ly­wood, remem­ber), but not in the cutesy Freddy Prinze Jr. way that it could. Will tries to help Mar­cus be cool, and Mar­cus tries to help Will not get trapped in lies. It all, for the most part, works out fairly well.

Hugh Grant bites into the mus­cles of his char­ac­ter and tears them out by the sinews. I think Grant, who was so sweet and nice in Four Wed­dings and a Funeral and Not­ting Hill, has been wait­ing for years to play a role that’s like­able, but not that like­able. He’s rude, dull, arro­gant and pompous, and Grant bull­dozes his squeaky impres­sion. I think he’s employ­ing a lit­tle method act­ing in this film, since deep down inside all men wouldn’t mind the life that Will leads, given the chance.

Nicholas Holt does a pretty good job of stand­ing up to Grant, but unlike the book, his char­ac­ter is a lit­tle more recessed than Grant’s. Mar­cus could whine, but he doesn’t. Bul­lies pick on him, his mother cries all of the time, he sings “Killing Me Softly” out loud in class by acci­dent, but he attempts to take it in stride, know­ing that one day when he gets to Uni­ver­sity that he’ll be bet­ter. I was impressed with his per­for­mance, and his char­ac­ter is well rounded com­pared to other screen teens.

Toni Col­lette plays Fiona as she was writ­ten in the novel; one of the most hor­ren­dous vegan hip­pies that you’ve ever seen with pol­ish and style. This is a far cry from the what could have been cliché poor-but-still-has-her-dignity sin­gle mom that she played in The Sixth Sense so well. Short hair, Army sur­plus clothes, hat knit­ted in Peru, she oozes hip­pie. She cares about Mar­cus more than any­thing, but depres­sion usu­ally wins out in her bat­tle to care for him. It’s heart wrench­ing to watch.

Lastly, Rachel Weisz plays the object of Will’s affec­tion and the vic­tim of his lies. I haven’t seen any of The Mummy films, but I saw her in Enemy at the Gates, and she seemed lit­tle more than win­dow dress­ing in that film. Unfor­tu­nately, she’s sort of used as win­dow dress­ing here too. If this were a Bog­art film from the 1940’s, she’d be “The Skirt”.

I liked this film a lot and laughed out loud many times when the audi­ence was silent. I felt kind of weird doing that, but it seemed like a pri­vate joke remem­bered fondly between friends who’ve known each other a very long time.