“This plot, as it stands, could supply the material for complacent stupidity—a formula sitcom with one of the Culkin kids blinking cutely,” wrote the late Roger Ebert of the film version of About a Boy back in 2002. And he was correct, though I highly doubt he was expecting the people at NBC to read his review and take tips for their programming.
Ebert’s whole point was how very stupid the film was not, how masterfully both the film and the source material, Nick Hornby’s 1996 novel, transcended their setups. The setup in question is that Will, a wealthy, lazy bachelor, realizes that single mothers are very grateful and easy-to-ditch lovers (they tend to have other things to do, and leave him guilt-free). Upon this realization, he invents a fake child and joins a single parents group. Ha ha, right? The smart thing about Hornby’s book was that it recognized this as a clever McGuffin rather than an actual plot unto itself, a clothesline off of which hung human relationships and unlikely bonding opportunities. For instance, Will ends up meeting Marcus, the young son of another member of the single parents group, and he’s taken aback when he comes home to Marcus’s mother Fiona having tried to kill herself at the end of the day.
The novel was actually quite dark, and this suicide attempt reverberated throughout the entire thing. Not only did the possibility of a second attempt by Fiona hang over every appearance she had on the page (and even more than that; the whole reason Will and Marcus become close is because Marcus can’t bear to go home anymore, and hangs out in Will’s apartment), but Will himself contemplates suicide as the novel progresses, recognizing how little he has going on his life. And further still, Kurt Cobain’s death kicks off the entire third act, as Nirvana serves as a continuous soundtrack for each scene, and Marcus’s one friend Ellie, too, wonders what the point of living is.
The film had to work through the issue of Nirvana’s copyright license, and somehow create the same story while severing a pretty major thread. And yet it worked, because everyone involved understood the sadness that stood at the heart of the story, that these were desperate and lonely people who, to borrow Marcus’s phrase, needed people—“one isn’t enough, you need two at least.”
And directors Chris and Paul Weitz (and screenwriter Peter Hedges) knew that the only way to properly make a film about lonely desperate people was to get those lonely desperate people exactly right. Hugh Grant, in by far his best-ever performance, found depth in Will’s shallowness, perhaps because he’s an actor who’s been accused of having only one dimension himself (his films don’t often have a lot of meaning, and Will’s specific philosophy is that it’s best not to “mean” anything). Therefore, it’s heartbreaking to watch, for instance, when his girlfriend Rachel finds him out and asks him to offer anything at all that’s substantive about him, accusing him of being “blank,” and watching Grant’s face as he realizes there’s nothing to offer. Likewise, Nicholas Hoult as Marcus was the right actor to choose, a thoughtful kid with a bad haircut—because Marcus’s main problem at school is that he’s a pensive, prematurely sensitive kid, and doesn’t understand the other kids’ sarcasm and doesn’t know what’s cool. This is because of his mother Fiona, who as played by Toni Collette means the absolute best for her child, but has no idea how to make him or herself happy.
The NBC version of this story is remarkably stupid. Will forms a bond with Marcus and Fiona not because of any active choice on their part (there’s no suicide, unsurprisingly, and so there’s no reason for Marcus to hang out at Will’s) but rather because they are passive victims of circumstance: they’re neighbors! Wacky neighbors! Marcus’s charm from the book and film lay in—to quote Ebert again—the fact that he was “so in need of being liked, and so deserving of it.” He was in need of being liked because he just plain didn’t fit in with the other kids; his mother’s vegan sincerity didn’t jive with the other kids’ cynicism. But this new Marcus (played by some kid named Benjamin Stockton) not only looks totally fine (he wears an embarrassing sweater for maybe a minute and a half of the pilot) but is also an expert in sitcom-style repartee. “I own you,” he whispers to Will when he helps him trick a woman—and it’s just so disappointing to hear that kind of line from Marcus, who in the earlier versions didn’t even understand what Will was trying to do because he was so oblivious to the possibility of someone being devious.
Likewise, there’s very little time to build up any sort of believable bond between these characters, seeing as a) as already mentioned, there’s nothing forcing them together anymore sans suicide (they just, you know, bond, simple as that, making you wonder why Will hasn’t become friends with some other vegan lady or some other twelve year old if he’s that open to it), and b) none of the characters are actual people anymore.
The worst offense has a little bit to do with (b) above. Fiona is a caricature here, and the caricature isn’t even accurate. Whereas in the earlier versions, she delighted in singing Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” with her son (hence another reason Marcus is so unpopular—he likes his mother’s taste in music, which is why Will introduces him to Nirvana) because she despises modern music, here she sings, of all things, a One Direction song to him.
Yeah, a One Direction song. Hold on—that’s not the worst part. The film dealt with its inability to include Cobain references in its third act by creating a talent show, a set piece wherein Marcus could attempt to cheer up his mom and humiliate himself in the process, until Will arrives to sing with him and take all of the mockery himself. That ending wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, and tied things up a bit too neatly (the novel’s much messier). But at least it had the great combination of Grant’s performance, the point of “Killing Me Softly” being a song a bunch of middle schoolers would scoff at, and the reason for Will’s rescue being that he risks his own coolness to make Marcus look good.
Here, in a truly cringe-worthy and incoherent scene, Marcus tries to sing that “One Direction” song, which Will inexplicably knows the words to and knows how to play on the guitar, and creates a light show and a fog machine in about ten seconds, and all the kids go nuts for it. I mean gag me.
Apologies if this review is getting ranty, but as someone who’s read the book and seen the film at least ten times each, it’s difficult for me not to get almost personally offended by what NBC has done to the material. It’s actually quite similar to what they did to Parenthood (it’s from the makers of Parenthood, btw), taking a pointed film about family and making it into a dramatic version of Full House. Lucky for Ebert, he didn’t have to live to see the result.
About Ted McLoof
Ted McLoof is a writer at Rookerville and teaches fiction at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Gertrude, Monkeybicycle, Sonora Review, Hobart, DIAGRAM, The Associative Press, and elsewhere.He's recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. He is very cool and very handsome and he'd like to buy you a drink.