BEFORE: Finishing off the Hugh Grant portion of the romance chain - for a while there he was the go-to guy for romantic comedies, but I think he sort of aged out of the program, leaving him with roles in films like, well, whatever "Cloud Atlas" was.
THE PLOT: A cynical, immature young man is taught how to act like a grown-up by a little boy.
AFTER: Like "Notting Hill", I'm going to classify this one as slightly above average, in this case because it ended up being about so much more than a straight, simple Hollywood romance. It's about a boy trying to fit in at school, even though he's got a mother who seems to have gone out of her way to raise him in a different manner than most boys. Trust me on this, when I say this tends to produce kids who grow up to think for themselves, provided they can survive until high school ends. My mother similarly knew nothing about helping her son fit in, and the goal of school is fitting in, or at least not calling to much attention to yourself. By dressing me the way she did in grade school, my mom pretty much threw me to the wolves - she understood nothing about how cruel other kids could be.
Marcus, the kid portrayed here is somewhat lucky (even though he'll eventually grow up to be covered in blue fur in the X-Men films...) because he does have a male figure that he chooses to bond with, someone who understands the importance of conforming to social norms by wearing the proper sneakers and being at least aware of current popular music. Unfortunately that man is a professional slacker, living off the royalties of the Christmas song his father wrote, and only interested in dating single mothers because they're so desperate and eager to please.
To do this, he first pretends he has a two-year-old son, who's conveniently never around. Once busted, he resorts to another pretense, letting women believe that Marcus is his son, and of course further deception leads to further complications. I can see why NBC turned this premise into a sitcom, because there do seem to be a lot of opportunities, people believing what they want to believe, leaping to conclusions for comic effect and all that.
Plus, it goes beyond the average romance film by not falling into the trap of assuming that there's one perfect person for everyone. There are enough characters and dating possibilities here to suggest that a person could make a go of it with one of several different partners, which again creates more possible plot directions, and doesn't sugar-coat things. This also acknowledges the more modern type of relationships we tend to see these days, where people have kids with one partner but live with another, or are single parents trying to make things work, etc. Plus, people here aren't always storybook perfect, they suffer from depression or lack of ambition or inability to fit in, which feels more real in the end.
Also starring Toni Collette (last seen in "Velvet Goldmine"), Nicholas Hoult (last seen in "Warm Bodies"), Rachel Weisz (last seen in "The Bourne Legacy"), Sharon Small, Victoria Smurfit.
RATING: 6 out of 10 episodes of "Countdown"
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