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Intro
Marcus Brewer is an anxious, socially awkward, and observant 12-year-old who moves with his depressed mum, Fiona, from Cambridge to London. He struggles to fit in at his new school, where he is bullied for his strange clothes and unconscious habit of singing when he feels anxious. Fiona’s depression worsens after their move, and Marcus often sees her crying at the breakfast table.
Will Freeman, conversely, is a 36-year-old bachelor living off royalties from his father’s famous Christmas song, “Santa’s Super Sleigh.” With a history of avoiding emotional vulnerability, Will believes in a life untethered to people or purpose and is mostly content with this surface-level existence. When he discovers that posing as a single father is an easy way to meet attractive single mothers, he joins a local single parents’ group, SPAT (Single Parents – Alone Together) and invents a two-year-old son named Ned. Will meets mum-of-two Suzie at his first SPAT meeting and is instantly smitten, and the two begin spending time together.
As Marcus’s bullying continues at school, his only two friends abandon him in the name of self-preservation. All the while, Fiona’s depression deepens, and Marcus frustratedly urges her to be a better mother. She arranges for Marcus to attend an upcoming picnic with her good friend, Suzie, while Fiona takes a personal day for rest. At the picnic, a SPAT-organized event, Will crosses paths with Marcus for the first time. In a bid to impress Suzie, Will tries to bond with Marcus over sports. Marcus, uninterested in sports talk, prefers to discuss his and his mum’s favorite music, like Joni Mitchell and Bob Marley.
Later, while throwing bread at ducks in a pond, Marcus hits and kills one—much to his own horror. Will convinces the suspicious park-keeper of Marcus’s innocence, and Marcus begins softening to Will. Before they leave the park, Marcus thinks he sees his mum in the distance waving at him, but she swiftly disappears. When they return home, the group finds Fiona unconscious from a drug overdose. In shock, Marcus dissociates from the moment while Suzie attempts to wake Fiona and orders Will, out of place and panicked, to call an ambulance. Fiona recovers at the hospital, but she is kept overnight for observation. Going forward, Marcus refers to these events as the “Dead Duck Day.”
Thinking about Marcus and Fiona after the incident, Will offers to help them. He becomes a mentor-like figure to Marcus, who tries to set his mum up with Will. Their different lifestyles—Fiona’s hippie leanings and Will’s shallow consumerism—ultimately prevent a romance from forming, and Will wonders whether he is capable of platonic friendships with women he isn’t interested in sleeping with. Soon, Marcus discovers Will’s lie about having a son, and he insists on spending more time at Will’s flat after school. After Marcus is chased to Will’s front door by bullies, Will buys him a trendy pair of trainers to help him fit in. But when Marcus’s bullies steal the shoes the next day, Fiona furiously informs the headmistress about the bullying Marcus endures, against Marcus’s wishes.
Outside Mrs. Morrison’s office, Marcus befriends Ellie McCrae, an intimidating 15-year-old who’s always in trouble for something. He politely says hello, and when he asks about the celebrity on her sweatshirt, she coyly tells him it’s a footballer named Kirk O’Bane. In their meeting, Mrs. Morrison dismisses the severity of Marcus’s bullying, leading him to spontaneously ditch school. Later, Marcus tells Will all about Ellie and inquires about Kirk O’Bane, who Will informs him is actually musician Kurt Cobain. Marcus uses this information to bond with Ellie and her friend Zoe, who subsequently “adopt” him into their own small Nirvana fan group. In spite of their age difference, Marcus finally begins to feel a sense of belonging with his peers.
Will spends Christmas with Marcus and Fiona, and despite a few minor rows, he generally has a pleasant time. At a New Year’s Eve party, he meets single mum Rachel and instantly falls in love, pretending that Marcus is his son to impress her. Meanwhile, Marcus attends Suzie’s annual New Year’s Eve party with his mum and is surprised to find Ellie there. They talk, bonding over familial struggles. When Marcus asks her to dance, she laughs it off and walks away.
Marcus agrees to pose as Will’s son and accompany him on a date with Rachel. However, the lie is short-lived, as Rachel’s son Ali doesn’t like the idea of his mum dating Will and begins threatening Marcus the moment the adults are out of earshot. Will soon confesses to Rachel that he isn’t a dad, and she surprisingly takes the news better than he anticipated. She shrewdly points out that Will seemingly cares a lot for Marcus, who he has no real obligation to, which she admires.
For a while, things seem to improve for Marcus, as he bonds with Ellie and builds confidence thanks to Will’s mentorship. However, Fiona’s depression inevitably returns. When he tries to tell Ellie, she lashes out at him, deeply affected by the recent news of Kurt Cobain’s attempted suicide. For his part, Marcus is too focused on his own pain to provide the support Ellie needs in the moment. Later, they reconcile in a school bathroom stall, sitting in silence as they process their respective grief and sadness.
When Marcus’s dad Clive injures himself and requests that Marcus visit him in Cambridge, Marcus invites Ellie to join him, hoping she’ll confront his mostly absent dad for him. Via newspaper headlines at the train station, Marcus learns that Kurt Cobain has died. Ellie, already aware, brings along a bottle of liquor to drown her grief. Depressed, angry, and tipsy, Ellie impulsively bails on meeting Marcus’s dad, hopping off the train before they reach Cambridge. Marcus, not knowing what else to do, follows her.
Ellie breaks the window of a record store featuring a cardboard cutout of Cobain, which she views as a blatant money grab. The police arrive, escorting them to the station. When Fiona, Will, Clive, and Ellie’s mum arrive, Fiona breaks down into tears and admits she hasn’t been a good mother to Marcus, dramatically vowing to do better moving forward. Ruth, the owner of the record store Ellie vandalizes, also comes to the police station. Ellie learns that Ruth is also a die-hard Nirvana fan, and the Cobain cutout had been a fixture in her store long before his passing. Ellie feels awful about her actions, but Ruth forgives her, acknowledging the all-consuming nature of grief.
Will’s experiences with Marcus and Fiona significantly shift the way he moves through the world, as the Brewers teach Will about the power and bravery of vulnerability. Marcus, meanwhile, not only learns how to be a kid, but also how to be his own person, and he slowly builds the resiliency that comes along with such a lesson. Unsure of what other challenges life will bring their way, Will concludes that both Fiona and Marcus—“the oldest 12-year-old in the world”—are going to be okay, and because of their influence, maybe he will be, too.
