Stranger Than Fiction

"Stranger Than Fiction" is a sweet and funny story that comes much closer to being a chick-flick than one would suspect from a Will Ferrell movie. It has its laugh-out-loud moments while maintaining a sensitivity toward its characters throughout.

Ferrell is Harold Crick, an IRS agent who has been living a very exact single life, counting every toothbrush stroke, every step to work, and every second that events in his life take. His problem, however, is that there are no events in his life. His life is one of constant routine and monotony. All of this gets shaken up when he suddenly starts hearing a voice in his head. The voice doesn't talk to him, but rather speaks about him. The voice is actually narrating his life, even foretelling of future events. As if having his life suddenly narrated isn't unnerving enough to Harold, he becomes completed unraveled when the narrator announces that Harold will soon die.

It turns out that the narrator-voice is, in fact, real-life author Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), who is struggling to finish her most recent (though ten-year delayed) novel. She cannot figure out a way to kill off Harold Crick. While her assistant (Queen Latifah) tries to help Eiffel finish her book, the real Crick turns to an English professor (Dustin Hoffman) to help him figure out the nature of his narrator dilemma. Complicating Harold's life even more is that he has fallen in love with a woman he was auditing (Maggie Gyllenhaal).

Suddenly, Harold's life has gone from mundane and unimportant, to one that he has truly come to enjoy. He wants to live. To do so, he realizes he must find the author. Their own face-to-face meeting complicates matters further, as Eiffel can't bring herself to kill such a nice guy, and Crick learns that the nature of his death is one that almost demands that he die.

Will Ferrell turns in his best performance as a "serious actor" in his turn as Harold Crick. You laugh at his situation, but you feel for him as well. Emma Thompson is outstanding as the struggling author looking for new ways to kill people. With Gyllenhaal, Hoffman, and Latifah nicely supporting the two main characters, the whole story is well-rounded and complete. Don't go expecting to see the "Old School" Ferrell, but don't avoid this one either. "Stranger Than Fiction" is worthy of a Thanksgiving weekend visit. I give it an A-.

"Stranger Than Fiction" is rated PG-13 with a running time of 113 minutes.