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About a Boy (Full Screen Edition)

About a Boy (Full Screen Edition)

List Price: $14.98
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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Hugh Grant as Will Freeman is fantastic
Review: "The dead duck day" from Yvonne Arndt

He is a genial writer. With every work he excels oneself. His novel have Nick Hornby be made as a worldwide famous author. He has inspired the film with his novels.
The film script of "About a boy" is based on a novel from Nick Hornby. The story looks how one of the partners is affected by the spiritual conversation of the other person.
The story is full of station.
Will Freeman is a human, who sees to it that his outward appearance is perfect all the time and who loves women. That is why he has a lot of women. Furthermore he hates kids. However he changes his mind when he gets to know Marcus.
Marcus is a young teenager who is not trendy, is bullied at school and his mother wants to kill herself. A friendship begins.
First Will Freeman is an egoistic person, but afterwards he is very warm hearted. Hugh Grant performs his part very well.
Marcus is mature for his age. Nicholas Hoult plays his part convincingly.
All in all, the director creates an amusing film who is especially family-friendly. The Film is easy to understand for kids. Especially worth seeing is Hugh Grant as Will Freeman.
Yet, the book convinces more, course of the far-reading action.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: You'll Never Sing With Your Eyes Closed Again
Review: This movie is hilarious from its first scene: Hugh Grant goes to visit his sister and her family. His sister proudly hands Hugh's character, Will, his baby niece and he accepts her as if she is a strange artifact dug up from an archeological dig; he is utterly helpless as the baby lies in his hands (I say hands because he doesn't know that he should hold the baby in his arms). His facial expressions alone had me howling with laughter. Enter Barney, his 2 year old nephew (referred to as "the antichrist" by Will)who likes to blow rasberries and punch dad in the crotch.

Nicholas Hoult plays young Markus and he is very gifted. He plays this character most convincingly. The scene where he and his "Granola Suicide" mother (the always wonderful Toni Collette)are singing "Killing Me Softly" with their eyes closed is so hilarious and so true to life.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: About a Boy
Review: Only a breadthrow away waits the new begin for Marcus ( Nicholas Hoult ) and Will ( Hugh Grant ). A new relationship is developed in which they take profit of each other. Marcus, once introverted and very much influenced by his hippie-mother, learnts to adopt to society and to assert his wishes sometimes. In contrast, Will lives in the day and considers women as sexobjects, but changes his attitude towards relationships and women and recognizes that relationships substantiate on confidence and truth. The actors understand it well enough to represent the characters. The settings and costumes are also apt. However, I think the hippie-costumes are exaggerated. " About a Boy " is a soft entertainment film in which spectacular and heartrending scenes are missing. All in all "About a Boy " is a film in which the fingernails stay unharmed and the handkerchief dry.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of my favorite movies ever!
Review: "About a Boy" is such an excellent, hilarious movie. From the beginning when Will (Hugh Grant) joins a single-parent group (S.P.A.T.) just to get "shagged", to the scene where Marcus kills a duck with bread, to the fabulous, touching ending that leaves you feeling so happy, I was hooked and in love with this movie. Definitely a Must-See! So go see it already! :o)

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A pleasant diversion
Review: Nick's books are light fare that touch on heavy subjects, but they work well. Brought to the screen, this story just didn't translate well. The performances are top-notch, and there are plenty of amusing and touching moments. Somehow, though, what plays well in the mind as satire just wasn't remotely realistic when put in my face with Hugh Grant playing an unbelievably shallow and self-absorbed man prior to his eventual rescue. It's easier to suspend disbelief with a novel than a film, perhaps, but as a recent reviewer put it, this is the old cliche of the movie not being as good as the book. I'm glad I rented it, but can't imagine wanting to buy it and see it again and again.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Should have been a lot better.
Review: The oldest dismissal line for filmed adaptaions of books, be the books well-written or otherwise is that "the book was better".

In this case, the book was written by confirmed pop culture and Arsenal Football Club addict Nick Hornby ("High Fidelity"), so the viewer should be advised going in that "About A Boy" as a movie had a lot to live up to.

And it just isn't up to the task. The book was as well-written and as involving as it could have been. Characters were developed with sufficient depth and the very title of the book (A play of the Nirvana song "About A Girl") plays into the plot and taps into the conscience of "generation X" by bringing early '90's icon/martyr Kurt Cobain into the story indirectly, yet importantly making him a central point-of-reference. As a result, the book DOES find itself to be rather dated the further we get from Cobain's death...but that event, so central to the teen angst of the period, made the teen characters seem more legitimately troubled in a way that the movie, perhaps more timeless as a result of parting ways with the book re: the Cobain angle, simply cannot adequately grasp.

Hugh Grant is fantastic in the role of a flawed male lead character that Hornby specializes in writing about, and his interaction with the other characters is alternately well-played and extremely uncomfortable to watch; his performance does make this movie worth a watch, but you would get far more out of the experience by reading the book. "High Fidelity", this ain't.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hugh Grant at his best
Review: This is the greatest showcase for Hugh Grant's talents. He really got kind of type cast in the 90s with pretty much every movie he did playing the stammering, floppy haired, nice guy. But this was a truly breakthrough role for him (along with his character in Bridget Jones' Diary). I'd kind of liken this role to John Cusack's in High Fidelity. Two guys who you shouldn't really like, that you absolutely love. I also enjoyed the supporting roles by Rachel Weisz (who's great in EVERYTHING she does) and Toni Collette and of course, Hugh's co-star Nicholas Hoult. My favorite thing about this movie, besides the movie, was the music. The entire soundtrack is from Badly Drawn Boy, and every song captures the feel and emotion of the movie. The standouts being Silent Sigh and the instrumental I Love N.Y.E., Donna and Blitzen, and Something to Talk About. So after you buy the movie, go out and buy the soundtrack as well. They're both excellent.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Hugh Grant's finest hour... About a boy
Review: Excellent film. The little boy in this does a fabulous job! Hugh delivers a terrific performance here as the adult son of a successful musician who's never had to do anything. He forms this bond with the little boy--unwittingly really--and grows up right before our eyes. Charming film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: If drama requires Transformation, this is DRAMA!
Review: Oh OK, it's a comedy, but it has all the vital ingredients of drama in the tradition of Greek tragedy. Characters with depth, with innate flaws (hamartia), pivotal situations, critical connections, human emotion and transformation.

Hugh Grant is type-cast in romatic comedy as fantasy-prince characters. Here he is as another 'light' character, but not boyish, not too good to be true. In fact, he's an unapologetic shallow exploiter of the kind of heart. But there is a GREAT (both large and good) transformation into a real adult human being. And he's not the only character who makes an important and 'good' transformation, growing out of their self delusions, changing from the charicatures that they want to be, to the adults that they must be, through helping others. OK, the message is a little predicable and mushy: no man is an island. But it's delivered in a really funny, realistic and interesting way.

Other wonderful aspects of this movie:

1. It shows the very British practice of being excessively polite. Study this movie to learn how to be REALLY polite, and kind.

2. It displays wonderfully snide, appropriate, funny and acute comments. A real bravura display of British snideness

3. It shows how children are NOT naive. They are intelligent, tough, resilient, courageous and NOT TO BE PATRONIZED.

I loved this movie, and I'm someone who've been accused of not having a detectable sense of humor.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Acerca de crecer.
Review: Cuando decidimos ver esta película, tuve mis dudas, pensé "otra comedia liviana de Hugh Grant", pero resultó ser más que una comedia liviana, aún siéndolo. La historia dice más de lo que se piensa, y hay una segunda mirada a los personajes que resulta bastante interesante. Como el que representa Toni Collette, una mujer treintona, en medio de una depresión autodestructiva bastante heavy. El personaje de Grant, es todo lo que quisiéramos ser, o hacer, pero se puede ver lo vacío que está el mundo de este sujeto. Muy recomendable, dejará un gusto especial.


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