It’s hard to believe that the two brothers, Paul and Chris Weitz, who gave us the hit comedy "American Pie," could have been responsible for injecting so much heartfelt feeling into "About a Boy," a scathingly hilarious account of a very British philanderer. I can’t imagine where co-writer Peter Hedge’s input into the screen adaptation of Nick Hornby’s best selling novel ends and theirs begins. To his credit, Hugh Grant hand picked the creative team that turned this into a winner.

Hugh Grant is Will Freeman, a confirmed bachelor living off the royalties of a classic Christmas song written by his deceased father. His life consists of watching TV, keeping up with the latest music, looking hip, and getting laid. The idea of a commitment to one woman for any length of time is alien to his existence. He is shamelessly shallow and dull. He’s a cad and not afraid to admit it. However, he’s 38 years old and his options are running out. His sister and brother-in-law know it even if he doesn’t. He tries to reconcile his conquests with his rejections as if he were balancing a check book. He comes up woefully short without understanding why. Overdrawn in his relationships, he changes tactics by targeting single mothers in a self help group. All he needs is a son to complete the scam. Enter Marcus (Nathan Hoult), a kid with problems of his own and a manic depressive vegetarian hippie mother (Toni Collette) with suicidal tendencies. Will doesn’t bank on the kid worming his way into his life. Nor does he count on the growing attachment that creeps up on him like the water line that inches its way up the beach with an incoming tide. He begins acting like a father, watching TV and talking about music and girls with Marcus: all the things Marcus can’t do with his mother, or that his mother doesn’t know how to do with him. Will never imagined that a commitment to anyone, much less a twelve year old boy, could be so much fun. But this fun has a price - a price Will may not be ready, willing or able to pay. A simple question, like "What do you do?" - a question he’s been asked a thousand times by countless women is suddenly relevant. The only answer he can come up with is, "Nothing."

When Will takes Marcus shopping for a set of designer clothes so he can look cool and impress a girl at school, he doesn’t realize he’s setting him up for fall at the hands of some classmates. His eventual humiliation incites Marcus’ over protective mother.

The kid - Will can deal with - but the mother?

Will puts his faux single parent life on hold. He examines his motives for taking the extra step to help this weird kid who’s put his life in a tizzy. Did he do it for the boy or for himself? Does the boy need him or does he need the boy? Or both? Does He need to be needed? Will tries to get back to his old self - without Marcus - without the mother - without a commitment of any kind. But fate has a way of stepping in and taking over. True! He no longer has Marcus hanging on his every gesture; nor does he have the elusive brunette (Rachel Weisz) that he suddenly can’t live without. Suddenly, and without warning, he feels lonely.

In an effort to reclaim his dignity and his friendship with Marcus, Will has to go the distance by helping Marcus bridge the gap between him and his mother. Everything comes to a head at a talent show where Marcus sings a song for his mother in front of the whole student body. Will lends his moral support in a spontaneous moment of poignancy that is totally without guile.

"About a Boy" has a genuine feeling for the lives of Will Freeman and the people who inhabit his world. Everything about his relationships, however false his motives, rings true. Hugh Grant never overreaches for effect as he has so often done in earlier roles with his sad cocker spaniel eyes and stammering modesty. He is always in the moment., letting Will speak directly to the audience through his thoughts. His observations are sometimes crude, often funny, and always brutally honest.

Hugh’s Will painfully comes to accept the change in his life even though all he has to look forward to is an unforeseeable future. He does not so much as travel on a road to discovery as he does awaken to a world where people are willing to open their hearts to him as long as he is willing to open his heart to them. I opened up my heart to all of them.

Copyright 2002

"Alfie" (1966) - Michael Caine is the title character, a playboy who measures his success by the amount of women he beds. Reflects the moral climate of the mid-sixties and the repercussions that went with it.

BITTER MOON (1992) - If you’re a fan of Roman Polanski’s sick sense of humor, you might like this tour de-force about a bitter writer forced by circumstance to live out his life in a wheel chair who lures a very proper British couple into a bizarre head game test that tests their love and faith in each other - just to see if they can measure up to what he once had with his gorgeous wife. It all takes place on an ocean voyage so they can’t get away from each other. The dialogue is over the top and the situations are in your face in a funny twisted way. This makes you want to stick around and see what happens next. Grant is at his early serious befuddled best with Kristin Thomas as his wife. Peter Coyote is the writer and Emmanuelle Seigner is his instrument of seduction.

FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (1994) - This has been played to death on endless reruns on TV but you might want to take a look after seeing "Bitter Moon" because once again, Hugh and Kristin Thomas are in it together. Although, Andie McDowell is the main romantic interest in this comedy about two people who were made for each other even though fate seems to keep the apart. They do get together but only after ….(read title).

"Muriel’s Wedding" (1994) - Toni shines as Muriel, a fat homely girl that not even her father loves her. She strikes out on her own, and finds herself the object of a champion swimmer who needs to marry her so he can get the Australian version of a green card to compete. She finds identity with another free spirit in with the help of Rachel Griffith.

"The Sixth Sense" (1999) - Dir. M. Night Shamalayan. Toni is the mother of the kid who sees ‘dead people’ in this one of a kind brain teaser that had audiences gasping at the revelation at the end of the movie. With Haley Joel Osment as her son and Bruce Willis as the psychiatrist sworn to help. (As if you didn’t know.) I had to do a few double takes to realize Toni Collette was the same actress who played Muriel in "Muriel’s Wedding."