About a Boy is not only about a boy, it's about all of us everyone who hazards out upon the dark waters of a relationship. And it's about the fate one embraces whenever a person trades his or her precious freedom for the claims a relationship makes on one's privacy. Will, the main character, is an archetypal man in this respect: he wants to remain an island, the lord of his own personal domain, while also having relationships with women if only for sex.
Unfortunately for Will, that isn't possible. Why? Speaking as a man who's been through the pea patch a few times, it's because women make the rules. There's no negotiation, appeasement, or qualification. It's better to accept it without murmur. But, valiant man that Will is, he tries his best to beat the odds, to be the only man in human history who has ever achieved both his freedom, and a steady supply of feminine relationships, simultaneously. I must say, I admired his tenacity. At one point of the movie, I thought he'd cracked the nut. Completely by chance, he accepts a date with a single mom. It's everything he ever hoped for: passionate sex, a regular ego massage, and an easy breakup. Bingo! He discovered the mother lode!
But then, a number of chance occurrences intervene to totally change his fate the fate of being an island, which he chose for himself. And just like real life, chance events show themselves as fate's very own calling card: everything that occurs of necessity, is expected, or is the product of a person's imagination, is powerless to reach our souls. Chance is the Janus face of fate.
What I love about this movie is its absurdity: Chance in the absolute presents itself to Will in the guise of a twelve-year old boy. And it's this wild incongruity that really gives this film it's pithy but warm sense of humor. The compulsive fornicator becomes a surrogate father to a fatherless boy, remaining an island, but joining up with an archipelago.
Unfortunately for Will, that isn't possible. Why? Speaking as a man who's been through the pea patch a few times, it's because women make the rules. There's no negotiation, appeasement, or qualification. It's better to accept it without murmur. But, valiant man that Will is, he tries his best to beat the odds, to be the only man in human history who has ever achieved both his freedom, and a steady supply of feminine relationships, simultaneously. I must say, I admired his tenacity. At one point of the movie, I thought he'd cracked the nut. Completely by chance, he accepts a date with a single mom. It's everything he ever hoped for: passionate sex, a regular ego massage, and an easy breakup. Bingo! He discovered the mother lode!
But then, a number of chance occurrences intervene to totally change his fate the fate of being an island, which he chose for himself. And just like real life, chance events show themselves as fate's very own calling card: everything that occurs of necessity, is expected, or is the product of a person's imagination, is powerless to reach our souls. Chance is the Janus face of fate.
What I love about this movie is its absurdity: Chance in the absolute presents itself to Will in the guise of a twelve-year old boy. And it's this wild incongruity that really gives this film it's pithy but warm sense of humor. The compulsive fornicator becomes a surrogate father to a fatherless boy, remaining an island, but joining up with an archipelago.