Hugh Grant plays Will, the guy that every 14-year-old kid thinks he wants to grow up to be. He has an apartment full of toys, he doesn't have to work, and he dates attractive women but dumps them when they get too close. Of course, things are never as good in real life as they are in the fantasies of adolescents. They are more textured, more bittersweet. Grant's life is pretty empty, but he doesn't realize it, at least not at first. He lives off the royalties from a Christmas song his father wrote, a song that drove his father insane and seems likely to do the same for Grant. We first meet him when he comes upon the idea of dating single mothers, thinking they would be easier to get rid of. This might be the most despicable character Grant has played, not because he's a genuinely bad guy, but because he is so unapologetic about it. He smiles that Hugh Grant smile and sheepishly admits that he's a cad, the star of The Will Show, which, he informs us, is not an ensemble drama.

The first part of the film trades off between Grant's blithely selfish lifestyle and the story of Marcus (Nicholas Hoult), the tormented son of a depressed hippie (Toni Collette) who dresses him as if it were 1968 and sends him off to school to be abused by the evil creatures who populate schools in the movies and in real life. The interesting thing about the film is that it does not initially make Marcus a sympathetic character. He's rude, more than a little odd, and more than once, I found myself actively disliking him. Of course, this is a movie about growing, so he grows on you. He is introduced to Will when Will acts on his plan to date single mothers.

His plan is simple: he invents a young son, Ned, and tells his sob story to the abandoned mothers who populate SPAT, Single Parents Alone Together. By the end of the first meeting, he has a date. Sure, he has to lie about Ned's whereabouts, but he isn't interested in having to keep telling the lie for very long. His date is friends with Marcus' mom Fiona, who sends Marcus along with Suzi and Will one day on a trip to the park. The date goes badly, and they return to find that Fiona has attempted suicide. Then one day, Marcus shows up at Will's house unannounced, informing Will that he will give away his secret of lying about Ned unless Will lets him hang out once in a while.

These are my favorite scenes. At first Will despises the kid because he's interfering with Will's schedule of slacking. Gradually, he becomes somewhat fond of Marcus, and at the same time, we do. We learn more about what Marcus' life is like, and it's nice to see the bond growing between them. They are good for each other, each teaching the other a little about what it means to be a whole person. Complications ensue when Marcus starts to become a little more liked at school but threatens to commit social suicide by singing "Killing Me Softly" at a school concert to please his mother, while at the same time Will meets and falls for Rachel (Rachel Weisz), who is too good for him, and he knows it.

The focus of the film is on Hugh Grant and Nicholas Hoult, who plays Marcus. Grant has never been better, nor has he ever looked better. His effortless charm, which usually comes off as smarmy and somewhat slimy, is tempered here by a focus that he doesn't normally show. He gets to be introspective, looking inside that guy we all thought he was in real life and finding something beneath the attractive but empty facade. It is clear that he, not Marcus, is the titular boy. Hoult is perfect as the awkward kid because he seems to fit the role so well. I have to admit that I didn't like him at first, but had to remind myself that he was supposed to be off-putting. A typical film would have put a cute little Haley Joel Osment type into this role, so the audience could be in on the joke, but then we would be cheated of the experience of growing to like him along with Will.

This is such a gentle, funny, mild-mannered comedy that I am surprised that the kings of toilet humor, the Weitz brothers, directed it. It is mature and restrained. I suppose that if Wes Craven can suddenly do a tear-jerker (Music of the Heart), anything is possible. The film just never took a wrong turn, something that amazes me. Even the big finale, which had me cringing in my seat out of embarrassment for the characters, looks in retrospect to be fitting and honest.

I guess I did have one major reservation about the film, but I suppose I am being nit-picky. One of the messages seems to be that the only way to true happiness is conformity. The kid is miserable because his mom dresses him like a hippie, and the things that make his life more bearable are materialistic: a CD player, Nike shoes, designer jeans, McDonald's. Perhaps this is realistic, but I guess the awkward high school geek in me is still raging against it.