About a Boy is often tagged as a comedy, which is a shame. After a couple of funny scenes in the beginning the movie settles into a deeper look into the stalled lives of two boys. One a 12-year-old whose mother works to keep him sheltered from the world and prevents him from becoming a teenager and the other a 36-year-old loner who never learned to become an adult.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t funny scenes throughout the movie. There are plenty of them.: almost all the restaurant scenes, when Will has to explain how he makes a living, and in part the big show at the finale. But these are touching funny moments; not the laugh until you cry “Best Comedy of the Year!” moments promised by the DVD box. Part of the reason is that the humor is balanced by pathos.
The basic plot is that Will is a handsome, 36-year-old man who has plenty of money, no career, no ambitions and is never looking for a long term relationship. After deciding that single mothers are his best ticket, because they are so damaged that they don’t realize what a jerk he is; Will becomes involved in the life of Marcus, a 12-year-old, whose aging, suicidal, hippie mother keeps him tied so closely to her that ever the other social outcasts at school don’t like him.
Gradually Marcus learns to build an exterior wall of cool around himself like Will has, in order to begin to fit in. Will learns from Marcus how to finally crack that exterior of cool to let someone in.
I don’t usually like to compare movies to the books they are based on, because the comparison is unfair. I will say for the first two-thirds of the movie, it adheres closely to the plot of the book. But in the final third it veers away from the book into its own more upbeat ending.
The problem with the movie is the big climatic scene. The reason I have a problem with it, is because it ignores the first two thirds of the movie. Marcus suddenly has to shift back to being the kid he was at the beginning of the movie and at the end of the scene have the world greatest therapeutic break through right on stage.
All in all, I did really enjoy this movie, because of Hugh Grant’s portrayal of an adult who is dragged kicking and screaming into finally acting like an adult. By the end he learns to breakdown that adolescent wall of cool in order to gain the deeper joys of a real relationship.
The parallel story of Marcus is also interesting, if less successful. It is saved by Nicholas Hoult’s surprisingly good acting job. It is he who manages to set the tone of the movie and leads the way for Grant’s character to explore deeper territory than his roles usually allow.