About a Boy

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About a Boy (26-Apr-2002)

Directors: Chris Weitz ; Paul Weitz

Based on the book by Nick Hornby. Soundtrack composed by Badly Drawn Boy.

Name Occupation Birth Death Known for

Toni Collette Actor 1-Nov-1972 Muriel's Wedding

Hugh Grant Actor 9-Sep-1960 Divine Brown's most prominent client

Nicholas Hoult Actor 7-Dec-1989 About A Boy

Natalia Tena Actor 12-Nov-1984 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Rachel Weisz Actor 7-Mar-1971 The Constant Gardener

REVIEWS

Review by anonymous (posted on 16-Jul-2006)

I wasn't going to see this movie until I wound up in Portland, Oregon for a few days and it was playing at a classic old theatre (the "Bagdad" - check it out if you're ever in Portland) for three bucks. And you can even enjoy pizza and beer freshly made on the premises. It was enough to coax me into seeing the film, which I liked a lot more than I thought I would. Besides, I must confess to having a soft spot for Hugh Grant. I remember his earlier, less cutesy performances in such films as Lair of the White Worm and Remains of the Day and longed to see him doing something more interesting than the stuttering, lovable token Brit he usually plays. In About a Boy, he loses his cowlick, sharpens up his cynicism and self-loathing, and thus becomes a new and intriguing character - before, by story's end, rediscovering his own inner Hugh Grant and going all cutesy on us again. About a Boy is another adaptation of a Nick Hornby novel - the first was the literally Americanized version of High Fidelity - and like its predecessor, it captures the soul of Hornby's contemporary urban bachelor pretty well while glossing over the more audience-limiting details of his stories. (In this case, the entire subplot of one of the characters being obsessed with Kurt Cobain - hence the story's title, a riff off of the Nirvana song "About a Girl" - is completely dropped, either because the filmmakers didn't want to set the story in 1993 or Courtney Love refused to give them the rights to Nirvana's music.) The Weitz brothers, who seem to be doing everything from writing (American Pie) to directing (the regrettable Down to Earth) to acting (the creepy indie Chuck & Buck) may not seem the right choice to helm this film, Yanks as they are, and their self-conscious visual style (spin that camera!) is a bit overblown for the quiet little story they're tackling, but they've chosen a great cast, and as it's said, half of a director's job is in finding the right actors. For those new to the story, Hugh Grant plays a shallow slacker who, living off the royalties of his late father's schlocky Christmas song, has led a life of leisure with no responsibilities. Proud of his womanizing, he infiltrates a single parents group in order to chat up horny single moms, and through a string of complications that I don't have the energy to relate, he ends up befriending a lonely 12-year-old boy (newcomer Nicholas Hoult, a natural) whose own single mom (the always interesting Toni Collette) is constantly on the verge of suicide. Slowly, reluctantly, man and boy bond. And amazingly, it's nowhere near as cloying as it sounds. Of course everything winds up mindlessly happy at the end, but in the meantime you will at least be treated to some perceptive wit, a London closer to the real thing than we usually see in movies, and performances that are genuinely fresh and thought-through. And the story is clear-eyed enough to even make you forgive its predictable denouement.

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