About a Boy movie review

April 16, 2010 - #7/100
About a Boy (2002)

Will (Hugh Grant) is an inconsiderate person, and that doesn't bother him at all. He only cares about one thing, and that is himself. He has never even worked in his entire life because his father made one crappy song and Will still receives royalty checks for it. In order to get women more often without a huge attachment, he decides to go after single women who have children. To be able to do this, he lies and pretends that he has a two year old son in order to attend a single parents support group. Here, he meets a woman named Christine. She has a friend named Fiona (Toni Collette), who has a child named Marcus (Nicholas Hoult). Fiona is seriously depressed, and actually attempts suicide. Of course, this sort of thing impacts Marcus. He's only 12 years old and he watches his mother cry almost every morning. Not to mention that Marcus isn't liked by anyone at school. He's constantly being picked on, and he sporadically sings aloud in class without even realizing what he's doing. After his mother's failed suicide attempt, Marcus realizes that there needs to be more than just two people in his family so someone can keep up with his mother. This is when he turns to Will. Marcus tries to get Will to date his mother, but that doesn't work out. So, Marcus just tags along with Will in hopes of escaping reality for a bit and not having to think about his depressed mother. It takes Will a while to warm up to Marcus, seeing as how he hates children. But, he eventually does. There is a particular scene near the end where you realize just how much Will really cares for Marcus. Marcus is a terrible singer, but he decides to sing at a school talent show because he notices that his mother is becoming depressed again, and she stated earlier in the movie that his singing brings sunshine to her heart. The song he sings is "Killing Me Softly." In order to take huge amounts of embarrassment off of Marcus, Will shows up on stage, playing a guitar and singing along with him. Overall, I thought that this was a very entertaining movie. Mostly, it was a comedy, but there were also a few sad scenes in the movie. I thought that the screenplay was well written, and the cast was really good. I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie.

I gave this movie 9/10 stars on imdb.com.