All it took was one look around the audience last Friday night at About A Boy to see just how shrewdly the film was playing against the inevitable juggernaut of Attack of the Clones. The audience was at least 65 to 70 percent female and people seemed genuinely excited to see a film totally devoid of special effects and explosions and Jar-Jar. The summer is young, but already people seemed ready for a slightly adult, slightly mature, slightly intelligent film. And About A Boy largely delivers.

While John Cusack and company transplanted their Nick Hornby adaptation (High Fidelity) to Chicago, Paul and Chris Wietz wisely maintain the book's setting (I have no problem with Cusack and Co.'s use of Chicago, but while Chicago is many things, it ain't London). And they couldn't have gotten better casting than Hugh Grant as Will Freeman. Will is something of a blank slate, living in a fabulous flat, portioning his day out between TV, meals out, hair-cuts, and encounters with attractive women. Will doesn't work, living on the royalties of a novelty jingle written by his father. A bit fed up with his social life, Will discovers a new class of available women — single moms. He pretends to have a two year old in order to join a single parents group and becomes involved with precocious 12-year-old outcast Marcus (newcomer Nicholas Hoult) and his slightly-bonkers mother Fiona (Toni Collette). Will and Marcus develop a strange relationship in which the lines of age and responsibility get blurred. And things get even odder when Marcus must pretend to be Will's son so that Will can get closer to the beautiful Rachel (Rachel Weisz).

About A Boy is mostly the story of a childish self-absorbed man and the boy who may or may not lead him to grow up. This is a common Hornby theme made a little too literally for my taste in the book and in the film. As literature, High Fidelity is much more effective. But that's neither here nor there, since About A Boy can be enjoyed without worrying about subtext.

This is largely because the script, by the Weitz Brothers and Peter Hedges, is endlessly funny and resourceful and manages to dance back and forth between broad comedy and some fairly serious themes. The balance in tones in mirrored in the performances of all of the leads, who are asked to be both funny and nearly tragic. Collette's Fiona is suicidal, Will is avoiding the fact that his life has no meaning, and Marcus is very-nearly a seriously messed up little kid, but out of the darkness of their lives, much humor can be mined.

Hugh Grant has wisely moved in recent years from the stuttering ninny roles that started his career to surer ground. Here, he gets to be cold, abusive and caustic and he does it wonderfully. Sure, there are scenes where he stutters and looks flustered, but this isn't just "Hugh playing Hugh." It's a performance. His line-readings and timing are flawless and his face expressive. It's also interesting to look back at, say, Four Weddings and a Funeral and see how Grant's appearance has changed. He's shed his baby-fat and his foppish hair and this is certainly his most adult "look" and performance. And he's helped along by his excellent chemistry with Hoult, whose flawless timing and hilarious eyebrows make him one of the most relaxed child actors to appear in a long time. The film could not succeed without the easy rappaport between the two actors.

The Weitz brothers have directed several films (the solid teen romp American Pie and the horrid Chris Rock vehicle Down to Earth) that were never accused of being visual interesting, so perhaps they can be forgiven for going a little overboard here. It's not that they rely on obvious camera tricks or anything like that, it's just that every image seems a little too calculatedly "framed" for my taste, like they watched too many Antonioni films and thought that they should introduce that flair to light comedy (the Weitz brothers always try in interviews to emphasize that they were raised watching a classier and more intellectual brand of film than the type they've ended up making). Other times the camera seems to be too obviously mirroring the emotion of the film (as when the camera goes upside down at just the moment Marcus is about to turn his life upside down). Still, I guess I like the idea of directors trying to expand, so I won't criticize too much.

The film's larger mistake (for me, at least) involves its move from the music that's central to Hornby's novel. Kurt Cobain and Nirvana provide the backbone to the book and there are emotional shifts that are tied to the music that make total sense. Hornby is nothing if not a brilliant musical chronicler. The music in this film includes a number of songs by Badly Drawn Boy (best viewed as the UK's answer to Elliot Smith), which over-articulate the film's themes. They aren't bad songs. Actually, they're good songs. But they make things redundant. And the use of Mystical's "Shake Yo A**" is good for a laugh, but it makes the film seem instantly dated, which is never a good thing. Robert Flack's "Killing Me Softly" is used in several important scenes to decent effect.

But in the end, you walk out of About a Boy satisfied because it delivers on its basic promise — it's a good alternative to the special-effects and testosterone heavy films that will likely follow in the summer of 2002. It's a film of emotions and human humor. And that's worth it.

Recommended:
Yes