Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
About a Boy (2002)
Director: Paul Weitz, Chris Weitz
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
What's surprising about this film are its writer/directors, who previously made American Pie, and the fact that one of its five producers is De Niro, whose Tribeca optioned Nick Hornby's book. Otherwise, it's all you'd expect of a Working Title Britfilm (light, cannily international); of a Hugh Grant comedy (gently rather than raucously funny); and of a Hornby cautionary tale about a self-centred male attaining belated maturity through love's discovery. The difference here is that the catalyst for change is a child, not a woman. If Grant appears a touch uncomfortable as rich but relatively downmarket slacker and womaniser Will, he remains adept with amusing asides and flustered emotions. Indeed, the performances are mostly fine. The problem, besides occasionally clumsy editing and direction, is the story. For anyone familiar with Hornby and Grant's past fare, it's deeply predictable. Furthermore, Hornby's crises and characters can be so facile, schematic and smugly moralistic that emotional substance can get overshadowed by fluff.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Paul Weitz, Chris Weitz
Producer: Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro, Brad Epstein, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner
Cast: Hugh Grant, Toni Collette, Rachel Weisz, Isabel Brook, Sharon Small, Victoria Smurfit, Nicholas Hoult full cast
Genre(s): Comedy
Duration: 101 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now