In today's world, many people go through a development to get to a place where everything seems fall into place. These developments can be anything from small to large; dealing with love, become a grown-up, dealing with financial commitments or something completely different and they happen when you are child, teenage or adult. They can also occur in relationships and in families, were it is not only you who are struggling with a development, but two – maybe more people. This can causes further conflict, as you may not agree on how to deal with conflicts and how to progress the development. In the movie and the book "About a boy" a lot of different developments are looked into, and brought up in all sorts of ways. This happens most often through the two main characters' life and everyday.

The movie and the book use multiple viewpoints. The story is told by only one character at a time, but the viewpoint switches between the two main characters throughout the course of the movie and the book. In every chapter of the book it changes from Marcus viewpoint to Will’s, and in the movie it changes when we as viewer follows Marcus’s actions to Will’s. We know what Marcus and Will thinks, which gives us a perspective from several different angles and in this case keeps the story fresh and exciting. The author has done an incredibly good job, as he has managed not to lose the viewer/reader through the multiple viewpoints, and that is because the transitions are well done. The narrator is a 3rd person narrator and it is character-bounded to Marcus and Will.

In the movie and the book, there are two main characters – Marcus and Will, who both are round characters because they develop much though the story. Marcus is a special 12-year old boy and seems very grown-up for his age. In the beginning of the story he is very influenced by his mother, Fiona, but as the story goes on he finds out that he is capable of making his own decisions. Will is a 36-year old man who doesn’t want to grow up, so he tries to do everything he can to stay young and smart. He don’t work or do anything, because he lives on the money, which his father earned on writhing a famous Christmas song. There are many differences and similarities between the two main characters. Will is an adult, he is smart and cool and likes to think that he is a ladies man, which is the opposite to Marcus who is a young kid, uncool and definitely not a ladies man. Will is immature and he only thinks about himself and he doesn’t do things to please other, only himself. Marcus on the other hand is very grown-up and doesn’t think too much about himself and his needs, he likes to please others and does it daily. Will is passionate about material things, where Marcus appreciates smaller things. But the two of them also have some things in common. They are both lonely because they are missing something in their lives. Marcus misses his “old” happy mother, and Will misses a girlfriend. They could both need a friend to help themselves and they both need to get control of their lives. Later on they both fall in love and goes through a development.

Though the story Marcus’s relationship with his mother and Will develops. The development between Marcus and his mother went from okay, to very bad, to maybe better than before. In the beginning their relationship was okay, but as the story went on it started to get worse and worse. Fiona was always crying and unhappy and they never spend time together. Later on she tried to commit suicide, which was kind of a turning point, because Will then had a talk with her and she realized that Marcus needed her to be there for him, and that she needed to be a good mother again. Marcus also found a way to make her happy, by singing at the school rock-concert. The development between Marcus and Will is a bit different, because they didn’t know each other at the begging. When they first meet they hated each other, but then they realized that they could “use” each other to get something they needed. Marcus needed Will to make his mother happy again, and Will needed Marcus to get a girlfriend. The more time they spend together the more good things they saw in each other. They became really good friends and spend a lot of time together. In the end they became almost like father and son. The reason why they became such good friends are because they both goes through a massive development. A development they helped each other with – “I created a monster, maybe he created me, maybe we created each other”, - Will says at the end.

There is a big difference between the movie and the book, but they both used symbolism. The title of the movie/book “About a boy” symbolize that Marcus and Will both are boys. Marcus is physically a boy, whereas Will is psychically a boy. The seasons symbolize the mood in the story. Though the winter and the autumn Marcus was bullied in school, his mother tried to commit suicide and Will doesn’t like Christmas, so the season symbolize a depressive and sad mood. New Year symbolizes a new beginning for all of them, and at spring they all seems happy and content with life, and everything has worked out.

All in all the main theme of the story is development because both of the main characters go though a big development. Will developed to become more adult and mature. He ended up getting a girlfriend, quitting the lies and not thinking only about himself, but also thinking about others. Marcus developed by becoming more self-determined, more popular and he ended up being a young boy and not the grown-up. They eventually became whom they ought to be, and you can even say that they swapped roles.