About a Boy Blu-ray delivers great video and solid audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
Based on Nick Hornby's best-selling novel, About A Boy is the story of a cynical, immature young man who is taught how to act like a grown-up by a little boy.
About a Boy was the last film that the Weitz brothers, Paul (the older) and Chris (the younger),
co-directed before diverging onto separate paths. While they have remained occasional
collaboratorsnotably as producers on the American Pie franchise that gave them their
phenomenally successful startthey have explored different directorial interests. Chris ventured
into blockbuster territory with The Golden Compass and Twilight: New Moon. When he returned
to more intimate fare, it was with the well-received immigrant drama, A Better Life. Paul has
continued the pursuit of comedy, whether low (Little Fockers), high-concept (Cirque du Freak:
The Vampire's Assistant), bittersweet (In Good Company) or downright dark (Being Flynn). He
has also pursued a side career as a playwright.
About a Boy balances delicately between comedy and drama. Critics and audiences generally
responded to the film's tart mix of sentiment and strychnine, as did the Motion Picture Academy,
which nominated the Weitzes (and co-writer Peter Hedges) for an Oscar for successfully adapting
Nick Hornby's novel to the screen. The key to their adaptation is the use of dueling voiceovers by
the two main characters: Hugh Grant's overgrown boy, who skates lightly just above the world's
surface pretending to be an adult, until chance encounters burden him with adult responsibilities;
and Nicholas Hoult's somber child, who would just like to be a kid, but finds himself confronted
with circumstances that even an adult would have trouble handling.
Will Freeman (Grant) lives a comfortably detached London life of doing nothing. His material
needs are covered by the royalty stream from a holiday perennial entitled "Santa's Sleigh", which
is the only successful song his late father ever wrote. He has few friends, zero interest in other
people, and never maintains a relationship with a woman for more than a few weeks. His latest
insight is that single mothers are emotionally needy but sufficiently committed to their child not
to demand too much from Will. So Will manufactures a two-year-old son named Ned and
becomes the only single father attending SPAT ("Single Parents Alone Together"), where he
quickly sets his sights on Suzie (Victoria Smurfit).
At a SPAT picnic, though, Suzie not only has her own infant daughter in tow, but also a twelve-year-old boy named Marcus (Hoult), whose mother,
Fiona (Toni Collette), didn't feel up to
attending. Indeed, Fiona's depression is so severe that, when Suzie and Will bring Marcus home,
they find his mother passed out from an overdose of sleeping pills in a nearly successful suicide
attempt. An ambulance is called, and Fiona is properly embarrassed when she wakes up.
Marcus takes his mother's actions weirdly in stride. His response is a series of practical
planspractical from Marcus' point of viewto snap his mother out of her depression. In this
regard, Marcus shares the same oddly detached quality that characterizes Will's attitude toward
people, which may explain why Marcus takes to Will so quickly. (There's also a bonding
experience over a mishap with a duck at the picnic.) After quickly ferreting out that Will doesn't
in fact have a two-year-old son, Marcus blackmails him into letting the kid hang around his
apartment, which is much more interesting than Marcus' home. For his part, Will ends up
helping Marcus improve his lot at school, where he's bullied and so much a pariah that even the
nerds tell him to get lost. That all changes when Will gives him a CD that turns out to be a
favorite of the coolest, toughest and tallest girl on campus, Ellie (Nat Gastiain Tena, now Osha
on Game of Thrones). Her nod is all it takes to change Marcus' status.
The third act of About a Boy departs substantially from the source material, and the Weitzes note
in their commentary that they developed it in close collaboration with Grant. As entertainingly
busy as they've managed to make it, it has the classical structure of any movie centered on a
single relationship. Will and Marcus suffer a rift, which is then healed in a spectacularly unlikely
manner. A major element is Will's chance encounter with a woman who really gets to him,
Rachel (Rachel Weisz). She too has a twelve-year-old son, Ali (Augustus Prew), and Will makes
the mistake of letting her think he's Marcus' father. When the truth comes out, the relationship
crumbles, and Will despondently tells Marcus to get lost.
Meanwhile, Marcus' mother, Fiona, remains as depressed as ever, and Marcus conceives of a
grand public gesture to cheer her up, despite Ellie's warning that he'll destroy his new-found
credibility at school. All of the film's elements and major players end up united in a finale that,
depending on one's sensibilities, is groan-inducing, cringeworthy or mordantly funny. (All three
are appropriate reactions.)
Voiceover is often condemned, justifiably so, as the device of a lazy screenwriter, but in About a
Boy, it functions almost as dialogue, because the alternating voices of Will and Marcus see the
world from such different, though equally oddball, perspectives. Add to that the fact that both
characters are often thinking something quite different from what they're doing or saying, and
About a Boy becomes a fascinating demonstration of how imaginative writing and direction can
turn even a simple scene of ordering lunch into a quiet comedy of errors.
Veteran British cinematographer Remi Adefarasin (Elizabeth, Match Point, Band of Brothers)
served as the DP on About a Boy, and if you listen carefully to the directors' commentary, it's
apparent that the Weitz brothers worked closely with him to develop the film's visual language.
The two directors repeatedly note subtleties of framing, lens selection and focus designed to
reinforce the story, and it's a credit to Universal's 1080p, VC-1-encoded Blu-ray that these fine
points of visual design are readily discernible.
Now that Universal has set up their own transfer facilities in-house, there is a noticeable
improvement in their catalog output, and it's most evident in films like About a Boy that were
released before digital intermediates became the standard for post-production. Gone are the
obvious edge halos and mushy lack of detail that typically accompanied such Universal releases;
these were common signs of a weak image capture due to the use of a transfer recycled from the
DVD era. About a Boy on Blu-ray shows no signs of artificial sharpening and has excellent detail
throughout, except in areas of the frame that are deliberately out of focus as part of the visual
design. Blacks are solid, colors are drab as appropriate and bright where they should be (Rachel's
presence is usually accompanied by the greatest color saturation). If you look really closely, a
fine grain pattern can be seen, but Universal's approach in its new transfers seems to be governed
by the same philosophy that prevails in contemporary DI suites, which is to minimize visible
grain to the extent possible. This phenomenon should not be confused with so-called "DNR",
because it does not result in any stripping of detail or smearing of the image; what I'm describing
is an intelligent translation of the film's original grain pattern into something more "pixel-friendly". (Whether that's a good or a bad thing is a separate
question.)
The interplay between voiceovers and dialogue is the crucial element of About a Boy's DTS-HD
MA 5.1 soundtrack, and sound effects editing takes a back seat. Rear channel activity is confined
to ambiance and support for the distinctive soundtrack by Badly Drawn Boy a/k/a Damon Gough,
along with several songs that play a role in the story, notably Mystikal's "Shake Ya Ass" and
"Killing Me Softly with His Song" in various renditions, none of them good. It's all well-mixed
and clearly rendered, but this isn't a film you put on to inspire awe and envy in your friends and
visitors. Deep reflection, perhaps, and even a little grimacing, but not awe and envy.
About a Boy continues Universal's recent, deplorable trend of omitting a main menu, so that
extras can only be accessed during playback of the main feature, which continues in an infinite
loop. Among many other inconveniences, this design requires the user to select a commentary
track after starting the film, then rewind to the beginning to hear the start of the commentary. I
complained about this design, when Fox made it a standard for their MGM discs, and some
posters at Blu-ray.com wondered why it mattered. Now that the disease is spreading, more people
are waking up to the problems inherent in the design. At least Universal includes bookmarking
("MyScenes").
The extras have been ported over from the 2003 DVD. Omitted are the music videos by Badly
Drawn Boy and the DVD-ROM features.
Commentary with Directors Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz: The commentary is a low-key, almost self-effacing affair, but
it's informative nonetheless. The brothers stress that
they made a conscious decision to develop their visual style on this film, and the
commentary is loaded with references to their influences, notably Scorsese, Truffaut and
Godard. Many of the visual elements the two directors point out are the kind of subtle
touches that register subliminally, which makes the commentary all the more interesting.
Deleted Scenes (with Optional Directors' Commentary) (SD; 2.35:1, non-enhanced;14:20): There are nine scenes,
many of which are extensions of scenes that still
exist in the film. The best are Will's shopping trip to acquire the child's car seat that he
uses as a prop to support the fiction that he has a son, and an encounter between Marcus
and the school bullies in which Ellie intervenes.
Spotlight on Location: The Making of About a Boy (SD; 1.33:1; 10:55): The best
element of this "making of" featurette is the participation of Nick Hornby, but the
interview footage with Grant, Hoult and the Weitzes is also informative.
"Santa's Super Sleigh" (SD; 1.33:1; 2:59): The complete lyrics to the faux Christmas
perennial that generates the royalties off which Will lives. It should come with the same
warning the FDA requires on saccharine.
English to English Dictionary (SD; 2.35:1, non-enhanced; 2:48): I find it hard to
imagine that any viewer actually needs to have the term "bloke" defined, but if there are
such viewers, this feature is for them.
In the "Spotlight on Location" extra, Hugh Grant relates how his initial reaction upon hearing
that the Weitz brothers were interesting in directing About a Boy wasn't favorable. He loved the
first American Pie film (and rude humor in general), but he couldn't imagine the minds behind
that film adapting to the more equivocal sensibility that has always been the appeal of Nick
Hornby's writing. Many films later, it's become clear that American Pie is probably the least
typical film for either Weitz. About a Boy, which is hard to categorize, filled with difficult people
and lacks a tidy resolution, is probably their most representative work. It's my idea of funny, but
it's not for everyone. Highly recommended, with disclaimers.
As part of its 100th Anniversary this year, Universal Studios Home Entertainment will offer re-issues of catalog titles, and the Definitely, Maybe Blu-ray will arrive in the May wave. This romantic comedy focuses on the relationship between a political consultant ...
As part of its 100th Anniversary this year, Universal Studios Home Entertainment will offer re-issues of catalog titles, and the About a Boy Blu-ray will arrive in the May wave. Directors Chris and Paul Weitz's dramedy stars Hugh Grant (Love Actually) as an aging ...
