About a Boy
Every story worth telling is ultimately about a girl, says Peter Parker
in
Spider-Man, but the
makers of Hugh Grant's latest star vehicle, About a Boy, might
disagree. Yes, the film, which is already a hit in England, stars Grant
--
in his best role since Four Weddings and a Funeral -- as yet
another promiscuous, commitment-phobic cad who, in this case, poses as
a
single father in order to pick up single mothers. And yes, some
writers,
looking for a way to pigeonhole this movie, have called it a ""romantic
comedy."" But although About a Boy is very much a story worth
telling, it is, like the title says, ultimately about a boy -- about
two
boys, in fact, and the effect they have on each other's lives.
One boy is Will (Grant), an idle 38-year-old who, living off the
royalties
of a hit song his father wrote before he was born, has never held a job
for more than a few days and has never really had to grow up. The other
boy is Marcus (Nicholas Hoult), a 12-year-old with a depressed and
suicidal mother who is, by far, the most uncool kid in school. The fact
that he sometimes sings in class when his mind wanders, without
realizing
it, doesn't help.
Both characters tell their side of the story through voice-overs. Will
describes how he has divided his day into meaningless half-hour units
of
time -- one for watching his favourite sitcom, two for taking a bath,
and
so on -- and how he refuses to let any woman stay in his life for too
long. His life is a TV show, and everyone else is a guest star in it,
at
best. Marcus, for his part, says he wishes he could escape his present
life and be an actor like Haley Joel Osment -- maybe because his mum,
Fiona, is played by Toni Collette, who also played Osment's mother in
The Sixth Sense -- but he doubts he could ever get over his
stage
fright.
The two meet when Will infiltrates a support group for single parents.
He
claims he has a two-year-old son named Ned, who is conveniently away
with
the mother right now, and he takes a friend of Fiona's to one of the
group's picnics. Marcus tags along, but Fiona stays home, and when the
guys return, they find her passed out on the couch, suspended over a
pool
of vomit on the floor, with an empty bottle of pills on the table. They
rush her to the hospital, and nothing captures the film's delicate,
honest
mix of humour and seriousness better than Will's private thought that
the
situation was ""horrible, horrible -- but driving fast behind the
ambulance
was fantastic.""
Marcus, unconvinced that his mother will never try anything like this
again, decides he needs another parent as ""back-up,"" and so he imposes
himself on Will, dropping by after school to watch TV and do little
else.
And Will, of course, finds that, much to his chagrin, he actually
begins
to care about Marcus -- and this has ramifications for his own life,
especially when he finds himself attracted to a woman (Rachel Weisz)
who
might mean more to him than just another sexual conquest.
About a Boy is the third film to be based on a book by Nick
Hornby,
and unlike High Fidelity, which was directed by a Brit but
relocated to Chicago, About a Boy takes place in England and was
directed by two Americans, namely Chris and Paul Weitz, the eclectic
duo
who co-wrote Antz, co-starred in Chuck & Buck and
co-directed American Pie. With a resume like that, it's
impossible
to predict what any given film of theirs will be like.
In About a Boy, the Weitzes allow the humour to come more
naturally
out of the interactions between the characters, and they thankfully
refuse
to exploit these same serious moments for their sentimental value. When
Fiona and Marcus sing 'Killing Me Softly' together at their piano and
invite Will, who is desperately trying to hide his agony, to sing
along,
the moment feels authentic, and we are allowed to experience Fiona's
momentary peace, Marcus's hopeful joy, and Will's private discomfort
all
at the same time.
The script, which the Weitzes wrote with Peter Hedges (What's Eating
Gilbert Grape?), has its flaws; the brief references to Will's
father
could have been fleshed out a little more, and the film's resolution is
both a bit too messy and a bit too neat. But for the most part, the
film
strikes just the right tone.
-- Peter T. Chattaway
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USA: PG-13 | BC:
PG
| ON: PG