Good concept! Now if they had just come up with a coherent and natural script to go along with it.

Rating: 5/10 (18 December 2006)

One of the bigger disappointments of the year. The concept is interesting, and the cast is more than promising. Will Ferrell, in a slightly more serious role than usual, plays an IRS agent who begins to hear a British woman (Emma Thompson) narrating his humdrum life. It's merely an annoyance until he hears that his death is imminent. He attempts to discover where this story is going, through the help of an English professor (Dustin Hoffman), but eventually he just decides to live life to its fullest, which includes getting a girl (Maggie Gyllenhaal) to like him finally. The general problem is that it feels like the screenwriter (Zach Helm) came up with a great concept, but never really figured out where to go with it. Also, he never even comes close to figuring out how to reconcile the fantastic premise with the real world, in which the rest of the film firmly takes place. After the concept has been established, you can really feel Helm uncomfortably forcing the story along. Gyllenhaal's character is one of the best examples. She's made completely two dimensional, a supposed über-liberal hippie chick who despises Ferrell (who is auditing her) at first sight, but who later sleeps with him just because he plays her what we assume to be her favorite punk song (we assume because we're given pretty much no information, except that there's a Clash song playing in her bakery earlier, though the song he plays isn't a Clash song). It's one of the worst roles I've seen in 2006, and Gyllenhaal is at a loss, giving what is easily her worst performance ever. Even worse is the character written for Queen Latifah, who is given absolutely nothing to do. One has to wonder why any producer would shell out the money for a name actress when the role requires nothing. The story gets even worse after Ferrell finally finds Emma Thompson and attempts to stop her from finishing his story. He can't bring himself to read the ending (it's in outline format, so it hasn't happened yet), so he gives it to Hoffman. Hoffman declares that the novel is too good (though from what the audience heard of the book, it sucks) for Ferrell to live. At that point, I was totally lost. Luckily it ended quickly enough that I wasn't at the point of despising it yet (a couple of movies this year, namely Little Miss Sunshine, weren't so lucky). Some decent performances and some decent laughs, but it's a pretty big failure.