About a Boy

by Shari L. Rosenblum

In perfect rhythm with the light and easy prose of Nick Hornby's novel, Paul and Chris Weitz's screen adaptation of About a Boy lilts across the screen with engaging wit and warm humor.

Hornby's hallmark is the adolescent in a mansuit resisting adulthood with heels dug in, adorable in his deplorable self-centeredness, and ripe, even if not quite ready, for the great leap forward. He's been played deliciously by Colin Firth (Fever Pitch, 1997), and attempted heroically by John Cusack (High Fidelity, 2000), but he reaches his ne plus ultra in About a Boy, with Hugh Grant reveling in his most impossibly airy charm. A finer match between authorial voice and actor's embodiment has rarely been made.

Grant plays Will Freeman, a gadget-collecting commitment-phobe hellbent on proving the error of John Donne's presentment that no man is an island (he considers himself Ibiza, in fact), who finds his Peter Pan resolve put to the test when he meets his opposite number: a true adolescent with a grown up sense of responsibility.

Whereas Will has made it comfortably into his late thirties without settling down, having a family (though he does invent an errant wife and 2-year-old son now and again to help him meet women), getting a job (he lives off the royalties from a novelty hit his father had back in 1958), or doubting his self-worth, Marcus (Nicholas Hoult, in a mature, but not overly precocious, performance) has found himself burdened with an absent father, an unstable mother, lack of funds and a terminally bad haircut - all before puberty. If Will glides through his days cool, nonchalant, and dressed with flair; Marcus trudges awkwardly, out of touch, picked on, and weighted down by an ugly Peruvian-knit and shoes made for anything but running. The bond between the two is obviously inevitable.

But it isn't overquick. The film (like the novel) lingers on the day-to-day, the fairly and believably paced development of friendship - from resistance, ambivalence, ulterior motive, resignation, reconciliation to choice, and growth, through schoolyard rumbles, bad dates, accusations of impropriety, talent show traumas, true love and holiday dinner - with insight and good humor.

Though breezy in its telling, About a Boy is an incisive film that looks through people and wiggles out their failings. But it does so with an open-armed welcome to the fools men (and women) make of themselves (characters have quirks but do not become caricatures), and with a matchless generosity toward the lazy, the ditzy, the unhappy, the uncool, the selfish, the self-centered, the politically committed and the successful professional. The pivotal characters that dance around the film, from Marcus's throw-back hippie mom (Toni Collette, convincing if not lovable) to Will's ideal woman (Rachel Weisz, static and with an appeal beyond my ken) are not cleaned up or excused, but are nonetheless treated with a kindness not common. For all the digging and exposing and sharp-witted quipping the film offers, there's not a mean-spirited moment in it.

The title plays on the Nirvana song "About a Girl," (lyrics: I need a friend, etc. - Nirvana and Kurt Cobain imagery figure into the friendship in the book), but About a Boy extends beyond friendship to growing up, letting go, and holding on when you need to. It is, in that, more profound than it has any pretense of being. But it's not a morality play. It's a slice of life, somewhat sillier perhaps, with shadows darker than one might expect around the edges. A warm-watered wave of a film that washes over you with feeling while you smile, chuckle, laugh, and smile some more. Only the hardest hearted cynic, wearing blinders and ear plugs, could resist its buoyant good will, or ignore its decidedly graceful parting glance.

Donne was right; we knew it all along. '"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main . . . " Will though we may to be free men, the people that we meet along the way will mark us.

©2002 Shari L. Rosenblum
CineScene