The value of this film for me is about the boy, the 11-year-old actor Nicholas Hoult who does a great job portraying Marcus, a kid with trouble in his life.  Once on the scene, Marcus drives the plot line.  I found Marcus to be the more interesting and complex of the two primary male characters.

        Hugh Grant, the other male, is the famous name for the film.  He has been the bumbling, boyish, irresistible leading man in all his films that I have seen, e.g. Notting Hill, Nine Months, Four Weddings and a Funeral, etc.  Maybe he can do something else.  I just haven't seen it.  It seems to be his trademark, and I suspect it influences the direction of the films he is in.  During the interview on DVD, Hoult and the directors talk about Grant's innovative and improvisational ability.  Possibly within the limits of the character he typically portrays he flexes around, but I don't see him with anything close to the range of an Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman.

        Toni Collette did an excellent job as Fiona, Marcus mother.  My wife remembered her from Muriel's Wedding (1994).  And I recognized Rachel Weisz who portrayed Rachel in this film and Tania from Enemy at the Gates, Evy in the Mummy and its sequel, and Miranda in Stealing Beauty.

        The advertising hype calls this a comedy and there is comic dialogue.  In particular, the character Will played by Hugh Grant has thoughts that you hear which are diametrically opposed to what he says.  This contrast is so dramatic, that it caught me by surprise and I laughed.  But it was not a comfortable laugh.

        As the story closed, I found myself annoyed and irritated.  I do not tolerate a comic setting in which the vulnerable are preyed upon.  I find it reprehensible regardless of how clever and iconoclastic it may be.

        And in addition to feeling offended by this representation of adult men, I thought the story faded out toward the end.  This film is taken from the book of the same name, which was written by Nick Hornby who also wrote High Fidelity, an excellent film.  I don't know the book, however the directors indicated during the DVD interview that they had changed the ending.  It was this last phase of the plot, the resolution that in my opinion, failed. 

        I m definitely in some infinitesimal minority with this review.  Other reviewers are giving it lots of stars.  I just don't think that forever shallow is that funny.