About a Boy film review

This film was directed by Paul and Chris Weisz; they directed American Pie. About a Boy is quite similar to that film. Also it was written by Nick Hornby who also wrote the book High Fidelity. He has turned lots of books into films and has had his novel published in 1998: Fever Pitch. The music was written and performed by Badly Drawn Boy, Damon Gough, Nick Hornby asked him to provide music for the entire movie. Hornby believes his music had the power to enchant and change people.

The main themes of this movie are; Growing up (changing), Consequences of suicide, Family & Friends (Love), Responsibilities, Relationships, Truth & Honesty and Single-parents.

The scene that really stood in my mind is when Marcus commits social suicide where he sings ‘Killing Me Softly’ for his Mum to make her happy. Will convinces Fiona to go and watch, and Will drives her up to the concert. Marcus had paid a boy in his school to play with him, but he wouldn’t play so Marcus goes out on stage himself; Can Will Stop Marcus from singing? The audience claps Marcus onto the stage and then he starts to sing and they laugh at his face is shown by a close-up on him and zooms out changing from time to time. Will comes onstage playing a guitar and plays backup. When they finished Will carried on playing the guitar expressing his, weird but funny, feelings. Rachel notices Will is not just thinking about himself for a change. This compares with the theme of changing people as Will used to think about nobody but himself but now he thinks about helping Marcus. This gives the effect that people can change if they really try to.

If you wanted to make the film better, I feel that you wouldn’t have to change that much. The thing I would change is the music should be varied, as the same style of music and get repetitive. Most films do not always have the same genre of music in. Other than that, I do not have any other criticisms. This is a really brilliant film and I could watch it over and over again.