*contains spoilers
Name: Melanie
Age: 46
Occupation: Teacher
Favorite Movie: About a Boy (2002)
Starring: Hugh Grant, Toni Collette, Rachel Weisz and Nicholas Hoult
First Saw It: On DVD at home alone when it first came out
Plot: Based on the Nick Hornby novel it tells the story of a self-absorbed bachelor who becomes involved with a misfit twelve-year-old and his depressive mother. A friendship evolves which changes the lives of those involved.
Melanie Says: I’ve seen this movie about seven or eight times. I like the different elements such as Hugh Grant being a selfish, horrible rich person… A single mother that’s struggling with depression…and how a boy just wants to make a friend. He’s different and so he’s bullied at school. The humor is quite good. Grant starts off as a sleazebag who joins a women’s group to meet women… But his relationship with a kid in need causes him to care about something whereas he didn’t care about anything before that. In the end, he’s part of a community – rather than like American Psycho, getting up every morning to brush his teeth – and in the end he had his own little family. It shows the importance of life is to have people around you because being alone is a sad life.
