Hugh Grant is a rich London lay-about who - through his pursuit of single mothers - finds himself in a relationship with a troubled teenager and her rather off-beat depressive mother.
Another Nic Hornby book adaptation and another Hugh Grant vehicle, which brings about a load of pro's as well as minuses to any project.
The author is actually a middle class, elite college (Cambridge) educated, ex-teacher pretending - for fashion purposes - to be a North London football roustabout complete with mock accent. So he must know a few things about living life as a fake.
While a fine writer, able to write well about small things, he is also light and throwaway. More like superior journalism than great novel writing, although always entertaining and down-to-earth.
Grant can't really act, merely do variations on himself. Here he is a bit more like the real person, no stumbling and bumbling and tripping over his own feet, but somewhat languid. While pleasant company he makes a lot of his nice face, foppish hair (here cut short and spiky) and upper class accent.
(Most English actors have come from the stage and have a range of tricks: while Grant has - somehow - grown up on film. Nearly always cast as himself.)
This is a film of small jokes and situation comedy. Running gags about the one song from which he lives (Santa's Magic Slay) and the empty tedium of his life abound, but I don't believe him. People don't volunteer to tell other people that they do nothing, they create professions (such as "investor") which they don't spend many hours doing. Equally the idle rich are not islands, they hang around with other members of the idle rich.
The film tries to not to go down the road of the obvious, the child who he befriends (or more accurately befriends him) is ordinary. If this was an American film the kid would be blonde haired and blue eyed, not so here. Naturally we are on a journey, if only towards fashion headgear and a better haircut.
Where is the Grant character on a journey to? That there is a life beyond daytime TV? Did he need to meet a child to learn that? Surely not. And where does the character go after this film ends? A slightly modified version of the same?
The film goes beyond the book in having a school concert in which Grant tries to save the day. Is this the best they could come up with? Character pieces are hard to end, but this is just an unpleasant pile-on-the-agony experience for everyone.
Overall, hard to dislike this film because everyone is working hard (and the music - from Badly Drawn Boy - is good too), but the sights are so low that it is barely a TV movie and I am not surprised they are making this in to a TV series. There is a lots of little jokes that could be rung and so many extra avenues they could wander down...
Another Nic Hornby book adaptation and another Hugh Grant vehicle, which brings about a load of pro's as well as minuses to any project.
The author is actually a middle class, elite college (Cambridge) educated, ex-teacher pretending - for fashion purposes - to be a North London football roustabout complete with mock accent. So he must know a few things about living life as a fake.
While a fine writer, able to write well about small things, he is also light and throwaway. More like superior journalism than great novel writing, although always entertaining and down-to-earth.
Grant can't really act, merely do variations on himself. Here he is a bit more like the real person, no stumbling and bumbling and tripping over his own feet, but somewhat languid. While pleasant company he makes a lot of his nice face, foppish hair (here cut short and spiky) and upper class accent.
(Most English actors have come from the stage and have a range of tricks: while Grant has - somehow - grown up on film. Nearly always cast as himself.)
This is a film of small jokes and situation comedy. Running gags about the one song from which he lives (Santa's Magic Slay) and the empty tedium of his life abound, but I don't believe him. People don't volunteer to tell other people that they do nothing, they create professions (such as "investor") which they don't spend many hours doing. Equally the idle rich are not islands, they hang around with other members of the idle rich.
The film tries to not to go down the road of the obvious, the child who he befriends (or more accurately befriends him) is ordinary. If this was an American film the kid would be blonde haired and blue eyed, not so here. Naturally we are on a journey, if only towards fashion headgear and a better haircut.
Where is the Grant character on a journey to? That there is a life beyond daytime TV? Did he need to meet a child to learn that? Surely not. And where does the character go after this film ends? A slightly modified version of the same?
The film goes beyond the book in having a school concert in which Grant tries to save the day. Is this the best they could come up with? Character pieces are hard to end, but this is just an unpleasant pile-on-the-agony experience for everyone.
Overall, hard to dislike this film because everyone is working hard (and the music - from Badly Drawn Boy - is good too), but the sights are so low that it is barely a TV movie and I am not surprised they are making this in to a TV series. There is a lots of little jokes that could be rung and so many extra avenues they could wander down...