About a Boy (2002)
Directors: Chris and Paul Weitz
Had I seen this before: No
December absolutely got away from me this year, which is surprising because after twenty Decembers in a row getting away from me I really thought this was the year I would have it under control. But here we are, and my tree is still up, which means it's still The Holidays and therefore plenty of time to slide another non-Christmas Christmas movie into your stocking where it will go unnoticed and get packed up to the attic until next year because who adds things to stockings on December 29th?
I wonder if this is a movie that I would have lingering fondness for if I had first seen it twenty years ago, the way I do, say, Bridget Jones's Diary, because it is not entirely devoid of charm and it is very much in the category of British dram-com that I sometimes have a soft spot for. Even now it's pretty watchable and moves from scene to scene quickly enough that it's easy to not overthink things when you're in the midst of it. But I can't say time has been especially kind to this one, and I suspect time has not been especially kind to Nick Hornby properties in general if you happen to be someone who considers women full-fledged humans and not just sexy irritants buzzing around insufferable man-children, who are the real heroes at the end of the day.
About a Boy is basically a sitcom plot stretched out to 101 minutes and spiked with weirdly heavy drama and era-appropriate rampant sexism. Hugh Grant plays Will Freeman (get it? he is a free man), a middle-aged playboy who has never had a job because he lives on the royalties from a Christmas song that his father wrote in the 1950s. He is sad about this. He is happy, however, about his lifestyle, which involves owning and doing anything he wants all the time and trying various proto-pick-up-artist techniques to sleep with beautiful women. One of my main issues with this film is the fact that it never succeeds in making Will's life seem in any way unappealing, no matter how many two-dimensional female characters abrasively harp on him about its meaninglessness. If I could live in a nice London flat with a top-dollar espresso maker and smoke cigarettes all day while I watched British game shows and shopped for CDs (I am also being transported back to 2002 in this scenario) and ate out at restaurants every night, would I really need the loving stability of substantial emotional connections? (This is 100% a failure of the film's storytelling and not of my own moral weakness in the face of on-demand espresso drinks.)
Through a series of cynical lies in which Will passes himself off as a single father in order to sleep with all the single mothers in the area (haha, just kidding--not the sad average-looking ones, as indicated by a jokey smash cut), he is introduced to Marcus, played by little baby-faced Nicholas Hoult, a 12-year-old outcast whose social crimes include having a bad haircut and an offbeat wardrobe and a mom who is depressed. The degree to which he is bullied for these things gives me real concerns about the British secondary schools of 2002. Said sad mom is Fiona, played by Toni Collette in a role so thankless that the subtle in-movie reference to The Sixth Sense in which she plays an emotionally compelling character feels offensive. We know that Fiona is depressed because she cries all the time, famously the only way major depression manifests in real life. She is also a touchy-feely hippie who earnestly sings Roberta Flack with her middle-school-aged son. The movie genuinely hates all this about her. The movie hates her. Just, so much! Toni Collette does have a very appealing pixie cut in this, and that's the only nice thing I have to say about the rendering of Fiona.
The film plays out in the most obvious way, which is that Will and Marcus discover that they both needed each other in their lives, but there are just so many strangely mean-spirited stops along the way to this destination. I know I indicated earlier that I did not hate watching this in the moment, which you might be starting to question at this point, but the fact is, Hoult and Grant's chemistry and individual charisma sort of paper over a lot of weak spots. Anna spent some time working out her feelings about Hugh Grant, whom she has previously only seen in Paddington 2 and a very quick cameo in a recent popular movie that I will not spoil: "I'm only rooting for this guy because his face...it's not kind, but it is interesting." "Maybe he has the hair of a jerk and the face of a nice guy. But with a jerk expression." Which is basically this whole movie in a nutshell: the face of a nice guy with a jerk expression.
Line I repeated quietly to myself Exchange that made my eyebrows go the highest, like almost all the way off of my head: Ellie: You like rap? Marcus: A little. It's by black people mostly. And they're pretty angry most of the time. But sometimes they just want to have sex.
Is it under two hours: Yes
Is it actually a Christmas movie: Two Christmases briefly occur in this film, including the final scene, and the protagonist (?) is hilariously haunted by a novelty Christmas song that only serves to remind him what a piece of shit he is. The lessons about needing other people are vaguely Christmasy, but overall the Christmasness of it makes up a very tiny percentage of the movie. 3/10
Classic Vegetarian Nut Loaf from The Kitchn with Parsnip Gravy from Affairs of Living
When Will attends Christmas festivities at Marcus and Fiona's house, he is served nut loaf with parsnip gravy. This is very funny to us, the audience, because Fiona's vegetarianism is one of the ways that we are alerted to the fact that she is a crazy person and possibly also a bad mother. Lol hippies and their plant-based diets!! She probably has some sort of ethical and/or ecological basis for her life choices, what a loser. Anyway, now that I know that this meal took two and a half hours of work not counting the amount of time I spent trying to find parsnips at my grocery store, I am even more mad about it. Good thing I have a tasty nut loaf to soothe me.
Up next: Anybody's guess!