Hidden depths
ABOUT A BOY Cert. PG
Money can't buy you love. Or happiness. 50 years into the West's affluenza epidemic we are beginning to recognise that wealth can destroy just as much as it can comfort.
The realisation has been a long time coming but now it's here, we see articles, books, documentaries and films about it. We've started fishing beneath the surface of prosperity, trawling for meaning.
By this reckoning the film 'About a Boy' is quite a catch. Hugh Grant plays Will Freeman, an idle, wealthy thirty-something, with a wholly self-centred existence and a flat full of gadgets instead of a soul. By accident of his plan to prey on attractive single mothers for casual sex, he ends up entangled with Marcus, a 12-year-old boy with considerably greater reserves of wisdom, courage and sincerity.
