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Review by Simon Bell |
 
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DVD SPECIAL FEATURES: Feature commentary with Paul and Chris Weitz; Making
of; Deleted scenes with director's commentary; Badly Drawn Boy videos; 'Born
In The UK' - interview with Badly Drawn Boy; DVD-ROM features.
The Weitz brothers Paul and Chris, responsible for such trashy fodder as American
Pie and the Chris Rock flop Down to Earth, look to pastures new in making
Nick Hornby's popular north London-set novel into a motion picture.
The writer has had two previous works adapted for the screen, both to reasonably
successful effect, while the American brethren were seen in Year 2000's fantastic
Chuck & Buck... All bodes well then.
For a lead, they have the UK's current most bankable star Hugh Grant: the
floppy haired ditherer here ditching the dithering and floppy hair, to cries
of 'best work of his career' and 'a most gifted and accomplished actor'. He's
still Hugh Grant though.
This time around he chops his locks to play Will, on the surface a ladykiller,
but really just a big kid with too many toys and spare hours.
Living off the royalties of his one-hit wonder Dad's Christmas top 10 hit,
Will has no job and wiles away the days in the company of daytime TV and an
array of gadgetry that would make any Stuff subscriber gag with envy.
He never sees one woman for more than two months and claims that if all men
are, indeed, islands, then he 'likes to think of himself as Ibiza'.
That is until he realises the joys of single mums. Itching for a shag and
indebted to any bit of trouser who pays her more than a passing glance, the
ditched and lonely progenitress, Will decides, is the perfect pull.
Tracking his would-be victims to a meeting of SPATs (Single Parents Alone
Together), he concocts an unlikely story of fatherly devotion to a two-year-old
son, snares a tasty blonde and eventually meets suicidal New Age mother Toni
Colette and her misfit 12-year-old kid.
Marcus
(Nicholas Hoult - impressive, but with enough precociousness to perhaps try
the patience of some) loves his mum and eyes Will as her ideal next suitor.
Sticking to what it says on the tin, About a Boy has little in the way of
a surprise or challenge. Bergman this is not. But Grant's affable rogue has
sufficient spirit to lift the farce. The dialogue too, littered as it is with
Will's recognisable mutterings on life and love, is waggish but disarming.
The sidelined Colette and love interest Rachel Weisz do all they can in support,
but in the end the skirts are no match for the callow protagonists' puerility:
This is very much about man and boy.
