There can’t be many authors who’ve given their name to a distinct sociological “type.” But so it is with Nick Hornby Man. The British writer of High Fidelity, Fever Pitch, and About A Boy has become a convenient shorthand for a certain kind of feckless modern male. Nick Hornby Man is confused, child-like, self-centered and crippled by a fear of commitment. This sorry specimen struggles to maintain an adult relationship with a member of the opposite sex. However, he can name every captain of the Arsenal soccer team since 1945 or reel off his All-Time Top-Five Teen Death Songs at the drop of a hat.
The cult success of Hornby’s books in the U.S. shows that Nick Hornby Man is a more or less universal concept. There’s nothing unique to Britain about geeky males being messed up about women. Hornby’s American fans might not understand the offside rule (clue: it’s a soccer thing) but they know that weary feeling that their beloved team can only be relied upon to let then down, whether that team is Arsenal FC or the Pittsburgh Steelers. Similarly, it’s no stretch to imagine slacker music obsessives bamboozling each other with their killer compilation tapes in Seattle as well as London.
Will, the hero of the novel (and now the movie) About A Boy, is Nick Hornby Man in excelsis. He’s a shallow, selfish idler who divides his days into half-hour “units” of time (having a bath: one unit; watching the dreary British TV game show Countdown: one unit; reading the paper: two units). Will doesn’t “do” anything, in the pen-pushing, wage-earning, nine-to-five sense. Instead he survives on the royalties from a sappy Christmas song left to him by his embittered, one-hit-wonder father. Will’s life changes, though, when he starts dating single mothers. The reason? They’re grateful, ego-massaging, and, rather conveniently, they sooner or later tend to bail out in a guilt-free parting. So Will “invents” a son and joins a single parents’ support group through which he meets Marcus, a nerdy 12-year-old who’s bullied at school, and his mother Fiona, a suicidally depressed, hairy-sweatered hippie.
Will’s deception is soon discovered, but he and Marcus form an unlikely bond. Under Will’s guidance, Marcus begins to “fit in” at school with the right tennies and CDs. Will, meanwhile, discovers that being a father figure, even one in a weird, non-nuclear family, is just as enjoyable as sitting around in his sleek bachelor pad, getting stoned in front of the TV.
All Hornby books (even the recent How To Be Good with his first female protagonist) are gentle, sentimental entertainments in which people “connect” and “grow” emotionally. And so it is with About A Boy. Hornby’s chief talent is in selling this old-fashioned idea to a hip, bored, cynical audience (post-grunge men, basically) via his razor-sharp wit and a gift for observation that a stand-up comic would kill for.
Movie versions of Hornby’s books, though, have been problematic. On one level they’re eminently filmable, packed with great dialogue and universal themes. However, all the books are set in the same small corner of North London, roughly bordered by the Arsenal football ground to the north and Kings Cross railway station to the south. It’s where Hornby lives. He’s a man who clearly subscribes to the age-old write-about-what-you-know maxim, quipping, “I’m not convinced that South London is sufficiently different from North London to justify the tube fare.”
Which begs the question: Should filmmakers stay faithful to this parochial world or risk transplanting the action? The lumpy, unengaging screening of Fever Pitch, starring Colin Firth (Bridget Jones’s Diary), failed to make much impression on the U.S. box office. High Fidelity meanwhile was drastically Americanized—as if a “real” London setting would be too much for an audience already sold on the faux Brittania of Austin Powers or Four Weddings And A Funeral. High Fidelity was a success, but effectively a new work, with John Cusack in the lead role and a shift in the action from ’80s London to millennial Chicago. Aside from a cloying, feel–good climax, the spirit of the story was surprisingly unmolested, and the producers simply updated the arcane music references.
For the cinematic version of About A Boy, directors Paul and Chris Weitz were hired, provoking visions of teen slapstick and, possibly, a few sex scenes involving pastries. In reality, the creators of American Pie have done nothing of the sort. Their real achievement was to give the whole enterprise a sharper sense of comic timing. This is an incredibly faithful version, trimming only the flab and updating the action from 1993 to the present. The kids at Marcus’s school listen to, say, Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass” rather than Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” This tweak does force a significant change in the climactic scene, a different crisis than the one brought on in the novel by Kurt Cobain’s suicide. But no Hornby fan could argue with how they’ve solved it.
They’d also struggle to find fault with the key performances. Hugh Grant, replete with new, non-floppy haircut and trendy urban wardrobe, seems to have no difficulty getting into the head of Will. This is, remember, a self-styled “tatty human being” who squirms at an invitation to become godfather to a friend’s daughter before confessing that when she’s 18 he’ll probably, you know, try to sleep with her. He should be thoroughly unlikeable but the audience can’t help but warm to him—the kind of role for which Grant is, of course, a natural. It helps too that his underage foil is never pathetic or precious. Nicholas Hoult is better than any child actor in their first major role has a right to be. And there’s one further recommendation for this engaging, uplifting, funny film. It also shows the highest fidelity to Hornby’s chronic obsession with obscure pop music. The musical score is ripe with moments of dappled loveliness, childlike exuberance, and classic pop—commissioned at the author’s suggestion from a satisfyingly cultish Mancunian bumbler known as Badly Drawn Boy. Nick Hornby Men the world over—and the women who love them—will not be disappointed.
About A Boy, starring Hugh Grant, opens May 17 at a theater near you.
Rob Fearn is the reviews editor of Q, the brilliant British music magazine.
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