About a Boy (2002)

Author Nick Hornby has made something of an art out of constructing narcissistic, middle-aged men stuck in time. His protagonists are not quite Peter Pans, but they are not fully-functioning adults either. These guys are cute, funny, self-deprecating, and jerks. One of the things Hornby does best is getting you inside the head of these traditionally stock characters (the bad boyfriend, the womanizer, the man-child); you are privy to the thoughts that dictate their unsavory actions, making them more than one-dimensional tropes. So, although they do and say appalling things, audiences (and other characters) fall in love with them.

The attractive scoundrel in About a Boy is Will (Hugh Grant), a 38-year-old who has never held a job or really done anything in his life. He lives very well in a nice flat with trendy furniture, gadgets, and clothes, thanks to a popular but bad Christmas song his dad wrote in the ’50s. Will considers himself the activities director on his one-man island, dividing his life into units of time filled with getting his hair cut, shopping for CDs, and watching TV and DVDs. After being set up with a single mom, Will considers them a new, untapped resource of temporary companions. He invents a 2-year-old son and joins a single parents’ support group. This allows him to secure a date with Suzie (Victoria Smurfit), only she brings along a friend’s nerdy 12-year-old son, Marcus (Nicholas Hoult). Marcus starts coming around Will’s place to watch TV every day after school, in order to avoid his depressive hippy mom, Fiona (Toni Collette). The boy begins to stir actual feelings in Will, and messes up his orderly life.

Grant is perfectly cast; you get the feeling this character is probably the closest to his real personality, rather than the awkward, lovable romantic leads he is famous for (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Love Actually, etc.). The role capitalizes on Grant’s natural knack for charming the pants off of everyone, only this time the character lacks the substance to make an audience truly root for him. Will is not interesting, caring, or genuine. However, the combination of charisma, immaturity, and voice-over narration make for some of the funniest bits in the movie. His narcissism seems to come from a place of honest naiveté about how humans are supposed to interact with one another (social niceties), and a deep-seeded fear of having to do something. This vulnerability, the hole we realize he has but he doesn’t, is what ultimately aligns you to Will.

Like Hornby’s other great movie adaptation, High Fidelity (2000), About a Boy balances a feel-good tone and plot structure with actual character development, unlike most rom-coms or coming-of-age films. The protagonists all grow in some way, but they do not magically become new and wonderful people; rather, they just gradually evolve into slightly better versions of themselves. Actions that come off as sentimental and cheesy somehow work within this context of more realistic, flawed characters. The narrative still contains the cliché grand gesture of goodwill demonstrating that the cad is a good guy after all, but you understand that this is not a complete transformation, merely one step in a long road to becoming a whole person.

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