About a Boy

About a Boy

Hugh Grant has never been more charming than in “About a Boy,” and by that I mean that he has never before been as totally, irresistibly likable as he is here. At least I think that’s what I mean to say. Charming, for Grant, implies something he does on purpose consciously, self-consciously and what’s striking about this performance is that he’s really just nice. Yes, the cad has a heart. There are moments late in the film when he speaks sincerely and you can actually believe him.

He plays Will in “About a Boy,” a 38-year-old Londoner who has never had a job, or indeed even tried very hard to get one (his father wrote the Christmas song “Santa’s Super Sleigh” in 1958 and Will lives off the royalties). He has never been through a relationship lasting much longer than two months but is perfectly happy with his lifestyle: “I was the star of the Will Show,” he says. “It was not an ensemble drama.”

His idea of life’s purpose is dating beautiful women pretty girls are his reason for getting up each morning and when they ask him what he does for a living he gives them that lazy Hugh Grant grin and confesses cheerfully, well, nothing at all really. Not one blessed thing. This is true: He does nothing whatsoever except sulk around his painfully hip North London flat, which looks like a showroom for Toys for Big Boys magazine.

Will is the creation of Nick Hornby (who wrote the novel), author of “High Fidelity,” which was made into one of those rare movies as funny and smart as it wanted to be; both book and movie were about immature but earnest men whose love of Women provided them with an easier alternative to loving any particular woman. Will’s mistake or maybe it’s his salvation comes when he begins dating single mothers, under the impression that they will be less demanding and easier to dump than single girls.

This is a flawed strategy, insofar as single mothers always come complete with children, and Will discovers that although he would make a terrible husband for any woman on Earth, there is at least one child (and probably only one) who might have been lucky to have him for a father. It takes a kid to teach an adult how to be a parent, of course, and that’s where Marcus (Nicholas Hoult) comes into Will’s life; Will is dating Suzie (Victoria Smurfit), whom he meets at Single Parents, Alone Together (SPAT), where he shamelessly claims his wife walked out on him and their 2-year old son Ned.

Suzie has a friend named Fiona (Toni Collette), whose son Marcus round faced and sad-eyed beneath the kind of bangs that used to get you teased in the school playground comes along with them one day when they take Ned to the park. We’ve seen Marcus already: His mother suffers from depression, which has caused this otherwise sweet little boy to become prematurely solemn and serious beyond his years. When Fiona tries to kill herself one day an event that Hornby sketches with perfect offhandedness Will finds himself involved in a trip to the emergency room during which Marcus decides that Will belongs in his life whether or not Will realizes it yet.

The Will-Marcus relationship is the heart of the film. Marcus starts by following Will, learns there is no “Ned” and ends up coming over to watch TV every day. Having had nothing but trouble with his fictional child, Will now finds that a real child is an unwieldy appendage to the bachelor life. Nor is Fiona a dating possibility. Marcus tries to fix them up, but they are clearly not meant for each other not Will with his cool bachelor aura and Fiona with her Goodwill hippie look and her “health bread,” which is so inedible that little Marcus can hardly tear a bite off the loaf.

(There is an unfortunate incident in the park when Marcus tries to throw the loaf into a pond to feed the ducks, and kills one.) Will finds to his horror that he likes Marcus. He does not admit this for a long time, but he’s a good enough bloke to buy him trendy sneakers, and to advise Fiona that since Marcus is already mocked at school it is a bad idea, by definition, for him to sing “Killing Me Softly” at a school assembly.

Meanwhile, Rachel (Rachel Weisz) enters Will’s life; she turns out to be much nicer than he deserves (she also has a son much nastier than she deserves). This plot outline as it stands could supply the materials for a film of complacent stupidity–a formula sitcom with one of the Culkin offspring blinking cutely. It’s more than that; it’s one of the year’s best films so far one of those films where you walk out feeling grateful because you’ve been told a story so well.

The movie was directed by Paul and Chris Weitz (“American Pie”), who deserve some of the credit for this flowering of Grant’s star appeal. There is a scene where Grant does a double take when he learns that he has been dumped (usually it is the other way around). The way he handles it the way he handles the role in general shows how hard it is to do light romantic comedy, and how well he does it. We have all the action heroes and Method script chewers we need right now, but the Cary Grant department is understaffed, and Hugh Grant shows here that he is more than a star, he is a resource.

In short: “About a Boy” is good.

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