Customer Reviews

Stranger Than Fiction [Blu-ray]

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A boring man with a boring life hears a voice describing his actions (but much more literate, as he confesses in the movie) as if the voice is telling the story of his life: how he brushes his teeth, how he walks to work, and how he may die. With the confounding relevation of his mortality, he decides to live a better life while trying to figure out the author of his narrative.

This is a dramatic fantasy, in the vein of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where the fantasy is believable given the great acting, setting, and story. It's a touching, intelligent film that has some clichés (my wife predicted the protagonist's end), which I can imagine critics clawing into to rip it apart; but still, it worked for me.

Incidentally, there's a great scene where the protagonist plays a nice song on an acoustic guitar: (I'd Go The) Whole Wide World by Wreckless Eric, which was a hit in the seventies. I found the mp3 for it (I'm guessing it'll be inaccessible in a month, now that the movie is doing well and everyone will be googling it, like me), and the lyrics are available at the songwriter's website. It's a simple song: E and A. That's it. For the chorus, strum the E a bar longer than the rest of the song.

I watched this dvd last night, and it was very enjoyable, in my opinion. It supposed to be a comedy, but it is more like a drama where Will Ferrell's character, Harold, tries to find out who's the voice narrating in his head and try to find her with the help of a literature professor (Dustin Hoffman) before his "imminent death" while the morbid author Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) trying to figure out how to kill Harold (unknowning that he's real) with the help of her assistant played by Queen Latifah.

The cast of this film delivers an excellent story about illusions, love, and a journey to discovery. Personally, I really enjoyed this film.

Short Attention Span Summary (SASS):

1. Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is a tax man. As a matter of fact, he's the kind of serious tax man that the Beatles sang about:
"Now my advice for those who die, (Taxman!)
Declare the pennies on your eyes, (Taxman!)
`Cos I'm the Taxman."
2. Crick begins hearing a female voice in his head narrating his life, and starts to take it really seriously when she starts talking about impending doom.
3. You've heard that the two inevitable things are death and taxes
4. You may be half right

Will Ferrell is really good in this role as an ill-fated character, and gets good support from Maggie Gyllenhaal as a sassy baker, Dustin Hoffman as a literature professor and Emma Thompson as a famous writer. Queen Latifah is mostly under-utilized, but makes the most of her limited screen time anyway.

Recommended as a Sunday rental to go with muffins and cookies - milk optional.

Harold Crick: "This may sound like gibberish to you, but I think I'm in a tragedy."

Amanda Richards

"Stranger than fiction" is for Will Ferrel what "Eternal sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "The Truman Show" have been for Jim Carrey : At last an intelligent movie !