About a Boy

Release date:April 26, 2002

Directed by:Chris Weitz

Rated:

Runtime:101 minutes

About a Boy is a 2002 comedy-drama film directed by brothers Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz, based on the novel of the same name by Nick Hornby. The film stars Hugh Grant in a Golden Globe nominated performance as Will, Nicholas Hoult as Marcus, Toni Collette as Fiona, and Rachel Weisz as Rachel. The... film at times uses double voice-over narration, where the audience hears both Will's and Marcus's thoughts. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Will Freeman lives a very comfortable and leisurely lifestyle in London thanks to substantial royalties left to him from the successful Christmas song that his father composed. Will does not need to work and spends most of his free time watching television, and reading about pop culture. When Will's friends, Christine and John , ask him to be the godfather of their second child, Will bluntly refuses, insisting that he "really is that shallow". In an attempt to avoid spending time with the couple, Will meets Angie , a single mother, but the two only share a brief relationship which, to Will's surprise actually ends amicably.
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A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and... in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century. Further definition of the genre is historically difficult. The construction of the narrative, the plot, the way reality is created in the works of fiction, the fascination of the character study, and the use of language are usually discussed to show a novel's artistic merits. Most of these requirements were introduced in the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to give fiction a justification outside the field of factual history. The individualism of the presentation makes the personal memoir and the autobiography the two closest relatives among the genres of modern histories. The fictional narrative, the novel's distinct "literary" prose, specific media requirements , a characteristic subject matter that creates both intimacy and a typical epic depth can be seen as features that developed with the Western market of fiction.
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