Hey folks, Harry here with the film playing opposite ATTACK OF THE CLONES opposite this little Hugh Grant comedy that I've been hearing is fantastic for quite some time now. It seems that ABOUT A BOY is about as good as they come. Will that make a difference opposite Episode 2? Yeah, I think so. This'll do quite well. Here's the latest from that booze runner Capone...
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here. Every once in a while, everything about a movie just falls beautifully into place, and you’re almost sad that your association with the characters on the screen has to end when the credits begin to roll and the lights go up. Let me tell you about ABOUT A BOY.
Being a huge fan of the book HIGH FIDELITY, I immediately bought and read Nick Hornby’s follow-up, ABOUT A BOY, and loved every word of it. It’s the tale of Will, a mid-30s rich slacker who doesn’t ever have to work in his life because his father wrote a one-hit Christmas wonder that has been earning insane royalties ever since. Will isn’t filthy rich, but just rich enough to spend as much time as he likes watching T.V., listening to music, and hitting on women with a fair amount of success. In other words, he’s as shallow as a kiddie pool in the winter, and he’s content with his lifestyle. Hugh Grant embodies Will in all his casual, effortless charm and occasional brutal honesty. He doesn’t care if he loses a potential girlfriend by commenting on some unappealing aspect of her appearance or personality. There are plenty of fish in the sea. He’s not mean about it, just careless with people’s feelings. I won’t go so far as to say I’d pictured Hugh Grant as Will when I read the book, but when I heard he was playing him, I said, “Perfect.” After seeing Grant play the likeable bastard in BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY, I knew exactly how he’d play Will.
One day he meets a woman that he likes and they go out for dinner. He discovers that she has a child, and his instant reaction is to lie about liking children, which goes a long way toward eventually bedding this woman. Suddenly a whole new world is open to him: the world of single mothers. In one of dozens of extremely clever and funny scenes, Will even goes so far as to attend a meeting of SPAT (single parents alone together), which he thinks will be a gold mine. It isn’t, but he does meet a lovely woman named Suzie. On their first date, Suzie brings along the son of her friend Fiona (Toni Collette) as a sort of babysitting gig. The boy’s name is Marcus (newcomer Nicholas Hoult), and he’s one of those poor kids that looks so uncomfortable in his skin it makes you want to cry. Will’s first encounter with Fiona is when he finds her on her couch after having vomited up the pills she’s just taken in a suicide attempt.
The relationship between these three mismatched individuals in the core this remarkably simple yet perfect film co-written and directed by Paul and Chris Weitz (AMERICAN PIE!). Fiona has raised Marcus to be a dorky mama’s boy vegetarian. Will and Marcus eventually start opening up to each other, and Will provides Marcus with not so much a father figure, but a roll model of how not to stand out in a dweebish way. And despite the fact that Marcus would love for Will and his mother to get together because he thinks it will make her happy, nothing works out how you think it will, mainly because of the introduction of yet another single parent into Will’s laugh late in the game, Rachel (played by the lovely Rachel Weisz). ABOUT A BOY doesn’t concern itself with simply teaching Will how to grow up; it shows us that sometimes we have to act a little less mature and parental to survive a sometimes brutal world.
For fans of the book, the Weitz brothers have done away with most of the subplot about Marcus and his punky “girlfriend.” She’s still in the film, but all of the Kurt Cobain references (which kind of put the suicide them on overdrive in the book) are gone from the filmed version. This movie is set in the here and now. As a result, readers of the book may be a little disturbed by the movie’s slightly sugary ending. Still, everyone I saw the film with (none of whom had read the book) loved it unconditionally. This is Hugh Grant's absolute best performance. Yes, he’s still a little twitchy and his hair falls in his eyes and is brushed back plenty of time, but he has embraced his new “guy you love to hate image” and he delivers Hornby’s stinging remarks like he invented them himself.
If I remember correctly, ABOUT A BOY is the only other big movie opening the same weekend as ATTACK OF THE CLONES. Yikes! Well, counter-programming has worked for other films in the past. ABOUT A BOY is the best comedy of the year so far (even though it features a suicide attempt).
Capone
