Movie weekend

It was the Nicholas Hoult Appreciation Weekend at Chez VM (and Chez MI)! Sure, it wasn’t on the official calendar, but that’s never stopped us before!

Saturday night, Amy & I settled in to watch Wah-Wah, the directorial debut of Richard E. Grant. It’s an autobiographical take on his youth in Swaziland, leading up to its (and his) independence. If even half the story Grant tells is true (and I haven’t read anything that indicates any of it is fictive), watching this movie will make you want to give him an “it’s not so bad” hug.

The depictions of his father’s alcoholism and his mother’s adultery & abandonment are harrowing. Somehow, Grant manages to bring whimsy to the story, in the device of a local performance of the musical Camelot, in honor of the pending visit of Princess Margaret. In fact, Grant’s take on the dynamics of day-to-day life in Swaziland c. 1971 are filled with charm, but always manage to show the dark side — the alcoholism, the faithless marriages, the classism, xenophobia and racism — of it all.

Which is to say, you really oughtta see it, at least to see Gabriel Byrne, one of the great “charming drunk” actors around, and Emily Watson, who doesn’t work enough. Julie Walters was also sublime.

Anyway, when Richard E. Grant’s stand-in in the movie returns from boarding school at age 14, Amy asked, “Where have I seen that kid before?” Thanks to IMDB, we found out that “Ralph Compton” was played by Nicholas Hoult. She said, “Oh, that kid! He sure grew up from About a Boy!”

Which led to last night’s conclusion of Nicholas Hoult Appreciation Weekend. Coincidentally, we TiVo’d about a boy in HD a few days earlier, when Amy & I were about to settle in with Olive the Other Reindeer, which I didn’t remember as having such dated (c. 1999) animation.

I’m going to roll into “tooting my own horn” territory now, but hey. See, back in 2003, on two separate occasions a few weeks apart, women told me I looked like Hugh Grant. “You mean in the mug-shot?” I asked both times.

No, said the wife of the German journalist who was on our press junket in Puerto Rico.

No, said the Yemenite matchmaker on the Upper East Side.

“It’s when you smile,” they each told me.

I was flattered, but perplexed, with that perplexity growing the second time I received the comparison. It wasn’t as flummoxing as the Matthew McConaughey lookalike I once received, but a compliment’s a compliment. I think.

Anyway, Amy admitted that she never “got” the Hugh Grant thing, after I told her about it. Until she saw About a Boy.

I held off on watching it partly because I feared it would be one of those “oh, aren’t those wacky British people charming and better than we are?” sorta flicks, and partly because the previous Nick Hornby adaption I saw, High Fidelity, was one of the worst movies of all time (except for the Jack Black stuff, of course).

So we tuned in last night and — tooting my own horn — I had to admit that I’m the bizarro clone of Hugh Grant. All I’m saying is, if everything about his face wasn’t quite right, you’d end up with me: far less than the sum of the parts. I’m much happier with this comparison than I was back in college and bore far too strong a resemblance to Jake Johannsen.

As it turns out, I was pretty entertained by the movie. I thought Grant put in a good performance as a cad. Sure, the character’s “growth” was pretty predictable, but I didn’t find it embarrassing or insulting. In all, it was a good-natured flick about boys not growing up.
What was incredibly freaky about it is the presence of Nicholas Hoult. See, as far as I can tell, this film was shot about 2 years before Wah-Wah. Evidently, Hoult spent that time taking Philip McKeon-grade growth hormone. The short, pudgy, geeky 12-year-old in About a Boy became a gaunt, long-ass stand-in for Richard E. Grant in about 24 months. It’s an amazing transformation.

Anyway, the kid’s a good actor, even with his freaky eyebrows. Go catch Wah-Wah and if you see Richard E. Grant, give him a hug for me.