May 17, 2002 | You may be happy to know - and,
then again, you may be disappointed to see - that Paul and Chris Weitz,
the sibling filmmakers who gave us American Pie, steer clear
of doing rude things to baked goods in their latest opus. Instead, they've
whipped up something even tastier and funnier by mixing prickly wit,
droll dialogue and cunning sentiment, then adding just a dash of edgy,
messy tragicomedy as a pungent garnish.
The
result is About a Boy, a seriously funny movie about a 38-year-old
layabout who's dragged kicking and screaming into adulthood, and the
12-year-old misfit who does much of the heavy lifting while weighed
down with his own emotional baggage. It's a match made in movie heaven,
and it's all the more amusing and affecting because of the spot-on perfect
casting of Hugh Grant and newcomer Nicholas Hoult.
Grant
- sporting a spiky new 'do that prevents him from falling back on familiar,
floppy-haired mannerisms - is introduced early on as Will, a shallow
cad who frankly acknowledges his own selfishness: "I'm on my own.
There's just me. I'm not putting myself first, because there isn't anybody
else there." He doesn't have to work, thanks to royalties from
a novelty song written long ago by his late father. (It's a chipper
Christmas tune, Santa's Super Sleigh, which, of course, Will
detests.) So he spends most of his waking hours on… well, on not
much of anything, really, except eating, drinking, buying stuff and
watching lots of TV.
It's a simple life, Will concedes, but a fulfilling one.
Every
so often, however, even a self-absorbed slacker like Will feels the
need to do something good for someone else, provided it doesn't require
much in the way of time, money, effort or personal involvement. He praises
himself for volunteering to work at a soup kitchen, even though he never
actually gets around to serving food there. And he proudly recalls doing
telephone solicitation work for Amnesty International. Trouble is, he
spent most of his time there chatting up single women on the other end
of the line.
Will
isn't drawn into genuine selflessness until, ironically enough, he attempts
something that, even by his standards, is deucedly cheeky, if not downright
shabby. After a brief, fortuitous fling with a divorced mom, Will deduces
that single mothers are the perfect partners for short-term, highly
sexed romances. So he pretends to have a 2-year-old son, and joins a
single-parent support group, all for the purpose of stalking fresh prey.
He quickly attaches himself to Suzie (Victoria Smurfit), an available
beauty. Through Suzie, however, Will becomes even more closely entwined
with Marcus (Hoult), the troubled young son of Fiona (Toni Collette),
an unreconstructed hippie who's given to singing '70s pop tunes, proselytizing
for vegetarianism and, with alarming frequency, wallowing in suicidal
depression. When Suzie, Will and Marcus find Fiona has taken an overdose
of sleeping pills, they rush her to a hospital. Suzie drifts out of
the plot. But Will and Marcus, despite Fiona's initially strong misgivings,
slowly form an unlikely friendship.
Fiona's
attempted suicide comes as a jolt - though not, strictly speaking, as
a surprise - but the only really quease-inducing moment in About
a Boy comes later, when Fiona learns Marcus has been spending most
afternoons at Will's apartment, watching TV and binging on junk food.
She wants to know why a 38-year-old man would take such an interest
in a 12-year-old boy, and the movie must pause - briefly, unavoidably
- to ask the obvious questions.
The
relationship is purely innocent - well, OK, not exactly pure or innocent,
given Will's status as a Bad Example, but altogether platonic - yet
Will must have a moment or two of enraged fluster as he defends himself
against Fiona's not-so-veiled accusations. Truth to tell, he opens his
door to her son only because Marcus won't stop ringing his bell. Opening
his heart to the boy requires more of a commitment than just buying
him new sneakers or cool CDs. And that's precisely the kind of commitment
Will has always avoided as fervently as Superman dodges Kryptonite.
Other
painful real-world concerns intrude on the deceptively light and bright
fun throughout About a Boy. Marcus, who shares the job of narrator
with Will, is brutally bullied at his new school for being "different"
(i.e., more like his mother than his classmates). Will takes a good,
long look at himself, and doesn't particularly care for the view. And
Fiona, compellingly played by Collette as a woman turning into a forlorn
ghost of herself, never appears very far from making another attempt
to shed her mortal coil.
Doesn't sound like a laugh riot, right? But never mind: The serious
stuff doesn't merely interrupt, it actually enhances the funny business,
making for an exceptionally fine and richly entertaining film that only
appears to be facile and featherweight.
Grant,
a master at suggesting unplumbed depths in the shallowest blokes, charges
his winning, wisecracking performance with alternating currents of farcical
physicality - note Will's wide-eyed reaction to a friend's new baby
- and wistful discontent. Better still, Grant brings out the best in
his affecting yet unaffected co-star, Hoult, who is refreshingly free
of kid-star cutesiness while conveying how arduously challenging childhood
can be.
The
Weitz brothers and co-screenwriter Peter Hedges are smart enough to
remain faithful to their source material, a marvelously clever novel
by Nick Hornby, whose High Fidelity also was served well in cinematic
adaptation. (A funny thing: Stephen Frears, the British director of
Fidelity, transferred that novel's plot from London to Chicago,
but the American-born Weitz guys keep Boy where Hornby originally placed
it.) Like Fidelity, Boy is the sort of book you should never
read in a public place, unless you don't mind being stared at while
you laugh out loud as you peruse the more hilarious patches. But you
won't have that sort of problem with the movie version of About a
Boy, because, in a theater, you'll be surrounded by folks who'll
be laughing just as loud, if not louder.