About A Boy (Wide Screen) > Reviews > STOP PRESS Hugh Grant Plays a Posh English Cad

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Standard
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	Touching story, well acted and sentimentally executed
Disadvantages:	In many ways a re - hashed version of all of Working Title's previous releases

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Hugh Grant has been in the limelight for a good eight years now, and not always for the most positive reasons (Divine Brown anyone?!), but one thing has remained unchanged: he is still playing the thirty-something, somewhat jaded quintessential representation of middle-english man, usually somewhere between a rock and a hard place but with a heart-warmingly sentimental end to proceedings. About A Boy is no different in this respect to all its Brit-flick predecessors (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones spring to mind). It seems Hugh can play just one part. Bully for him that he plays it bloody well.

Right, time to set the scene. Hugh Grant plays Will, an unemployed, responsibility-free serial dater who happens to live handsomely from the royalties of his dead father's omnipresent Christmas single. He whiles away his days watching Countdown, shopping at Sainsbury's and playing snooker, amongst many other banal pursuits. His uncompromising attempt to pick up his latest conquest takes him, somewhat disturbingly, to a gloriously observed single-parents group, humorously named SPAT (single parents alone together). After scanning the altogether glum and admittedly unaesthetically pleasing ensemble, he notices gorgeous blonde Suzy (Victoria Smurfitt) and duly concocts a make-believe son (Ned)and woos his latest subject. Will's inadvertant run in with Suzy's best friend Fiona (Toni Collette), an eccentric but ultimately depressive vegetarian and her equally non-conformist son Marcus (Nicholas Hoult), provides the basis for the film's plot.

The bulk of the movie focuses on Will and Marcus's unlikely friendship, at first shunned by Will who originally maintains his hate of all things children. Then, the complete lack of emotion in his life begins to be overturned as Marcus seeks solace from his bullying class mates and suicidal mother. However, this isn't all twee emotional heart-string tugging; About A Boy makes some wonderfully humorous observations less achingly choreographed than the more sit-com style nature of Bridget Jones. A visit to the house of Will's new girlfriend Sarah, played by Rachel Weisz, with Marcus as his makeshift son is hilarious, mainly because of Sarah's wonderfully neurotic son who makes an impromptu outburst that left me aching with laughter. Other stand out scenes include Marcus and Fiona's meal out with Will, Marcus's accidental killing of a duck with a large loaf of bread whilst out on a SPAT trip, and the rousing finale, in which Will and Marcus painfully perform a rendition of Killing Me Softly.

It is difficult to encapsulate the many levels of this film, and to appreciate it fully needs to be seen. It has more depth than Bridget Jones, although it bears all the hallmarks of a Working Title production (the team who brought us all the major UK films previously mentioned) with the ubiquitous voiceover provided by Hugh Grant, the visual and sarcastic humour and the wonderfully constructed characterisation. Nicholas Hoult is excellent as a misunderstood, emotionally-bereft child and has a very bright future ahead, as long as he sorts out the hair and his wickedly upwardly-pointing eye brows. Hugh Grant is everything you'd expect, which perhaps begins to tire after a while, and Toni Collette (star of Muriel's Wedding and Sixth Sense) is excellent as a loving but incapable mother desperate to keep her son from the scourge of the outside world. The peripheral performances are also sound, with the usual gaggle of British stars seen in these sorts of films. So overall, nothing too radical or original, but a bloody good laugh with a heart-warming ending.

Also, check out the soundtrack, entirely composed by indie singer Badly Drawn Boy.