Will Freeman was a cynical and immature man who is taught how to be a grown up by a young boy named Marcus. For the chance meeting to take place Will had been to single parent groups pretending to have a son in order to meet women.
Young Marcus has his own problems of being in secondary school and not having any friends. He is a little different and that has a lot to do with his mother Fiona who has been raising him in a strange way. She is battling with depression and spends a lot of time crying. Marcus must deal with this and everything hits a new point when one day she attempts to take her own life. That day Will is there and Marcus then attached himself to Will, going to his house after school.
It is therefore a film that has plenty of layers when it comes to story. As each character is fighting their own battle, I think that is very important because that is how it is in life. Each and every person is fighting some battle and we must think about that all the time. We often don't know what is going on, for Marcus the kids at school being horrible to him had no clue what he was having to deal with. I also loved that everything he wanted to do was to try to make his Mother happy, something that Will eventually points out that he does not have to and she must deal with that.
While the way Will ends up meeting Marcus is through many lies you have to also think that they were bound towards each other by fate in order to help one another. I don't even care if it wasn't supposed to be like that but I like that theory so I am sticking with it. I am sure we can all think of someone who has just happened to come into our life right as we really needed them. So I am going with that!
Nicholas Hoult really was fantastic for such a young actor to pull off this role really is special to watch. His career has been going so well over the past few years as well which makes it all even better to go back and watch this film. I also thought Hugh Grant was fantastic in this, maybe I don't give him enough credit at times as this really was a different type of character (in the end) to what we had seen him do during the 90s and early 00s. Then you add in Toni Collette and Rachel Weisz which makes it all even better to watch. I don't think I had properly seen this film before today, I am therefore very pleased to eventually say that I have now seen this film! I lovely British feel to the storyline and some great performances to go along with it all, so if you haven't seen it before then I recommend you catch up its more than worth it.
