If Nicky Clarke got a job with the council cutting hair, and a public school employed Charlie George to give elocution lessons, you'd have some idea of the novel cultural influences at work on Hugh Grant's performance in this version of Nick Hornby's 1998 bestseller, written and directed by Chris and Paul Weitz, creators of the American Pies. Where he was floppy and wavy, now he's spiky and tufty; and he's tousled the vowels up a bit - a little like Colin Firth's voice in the movie version of Fever Pitch - though the residual smoothie disconcertingly remains.
Grant plays Will, a rich thirtysomething living on the lavish royalties from his late father's composition of a Christmas jingle. He has nothing to do but lounge around his flashy bachelor pad, acting out a lad-mag lifestyle, breaking women's hearts and showing no inclination to settle down. One day, he hits on the idea of preying on single mums in their support group, pretending to be a single dad with a phoney child-seat in his sports car, ruthlessly exploiting their emotional vulnerability. On the screen as on the page, this sublime black comic inspiration evolves into schmaltz: one of the target group's kids - a clever, sensitive boy, bullied at school - zeroes in on Will's secret sadness and forces him to grow up.
Hornby's shrewd, melancholy book was "dad-lit" avant la lettre, and noticeably different from the rather more straightforwardly dramatic Man and Boy by Tony Parsons. The title was originally a take on Nirvana's About a Girl; in the novel, Will liked nothing better than to drive around with Nirvana on the sound-system full-blast, and in fact the book had a slightly strained Princess Diana-style emotional moment in Kurt Cobain's death. All this has gone, and the new soundtrack by Badly Drawn Boy is much less jagged and angry.
But something of its distinctive, slightly grumpy Hornbyesque gloom persists, particularly in the first section, before Will meets his quasi-son figure. In fact, much of the movie reminded me of something far darker. Where else have you seen an emotionally dysfunctional guy infiltrate a therapy group for his own screwed-up reasons? And then reject empty consumerist "lifestyle" in favour of an unlooked-for journey into his own masculinity? Fight Club. But unlike Fight Club, the discovery of true manliness in About a Boy - taking responsibility, relating to women as individuals, cultivating a mature response to children - is a gentle and redemptive experience.
And also a romantic and comic experience. Being a serial womaniser, Will must serially encounter a roster of single mums in a classic three-act structure: Initial Attractive Irish Blonde (Victoria Smurfit), Wacky Depressive Hippy Earth-Mother that he obviously can't get off with (Toni Collette), Extremely Gorgeous Woman that he obviously will get off with (Rachel Weisz) - and Collette is the mother of Marcus (Nicholas Hoult), who adopts him. Each of the women display the common sense and emotional literacy that Will lacks, and it is possible to imagine a kind of express-delivery TV episode version of the film in which Will only meets Rachel Weisz, who could easily be the initial flirt, the unhappy mother and then the ultimate love interest rolled into one.
All of their competent, lively performances circle respectfully around Grant, whose presence here is an enigma. About a Boy has been billed as the moment in which this brilliantly talented comic performer "grows up". I'm not sure. Will is less overtly charming than the hopeless Sloaney goof Grant played in Four Weddings and Notting Hill and the exquisite cad he gave us in Bridget Jones and Small Time Crooks. He is very good at showing the blankness of Will, his abject lack of any inner life and inability to make conversation that isn't strictly designed to get women into bed. The Weitzes' script (co-written by Peter Hedges) nicely conveys that classic Hornby sense of intelligent men who exist with no culture, other than obsessive-compulsive pursuits which erode rather than advance their sense of self.
But you long for Grant to say something funny. In the past, his performances have been pinball tables where the ball was hitting everything: lighting up, buzzing, clanging, ch-chinging. It's been mannered, certainly, but filled with energy and invention. Here, the table is quiet and dark for long periods. It isn't the mockney that sounds unconvincing, it's the thoughtful earnestness and implicit personal growth.
And Will's crucial relationship with his father is very sketchily drawn: a rueful mention or two, one hallucinatory glimpse in the supermarket, and that's it. (Perhaps, as in Notting Hill, parent scenes were cut, and we'll have to wait for the DVD.) Either way, the fact that he apparently has no baggage of his own, and it's only the women who are encumbered (with sprogs), is not entirely plausible.
This is a serious, intelligent and committed performance from Grant, however without some of the champagne-fizz of his comic stuff with Richard Curtis: and you can be mature without jettisoning the gags. It is a watchable picture, in which the Weitzes, particularly perhaps the Anglophile Chris, have acclimatised themselves to the downbeat cloudy London locations and presented a commercial comedy in the classic Working Title vein. But I really hope Grant hasn't abandoned the kind of smart, waspish comedy that he has made so uniquely his own.