Not exactly a copy of The Truman Show, which is part of the reason it was so good.

Rating: Null/10 (26 January 2008)

Despite the fact that I liked this much better than "The Truman Show," I'm not 100% sure that comparison is accurate. For one thing in The Truman Show there's a mass audience that knows who Jim Carrey's character is, and everybody knows that he's on television except for him. Nobody knows Will Ferrell's character, except for his co-workers, and one writer who doesn't even know he's a real person. There's another reason, but I forgot what it was.
Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, an IRS Agent who lives a lonely, ultra-mechanical life. He counts every step to the bus stop, every stroke of his toothbrush, etcetera. He's also a math whiz, so he's certainly capable of such anal-retentive behavior. Plus he has a fancy electronic wristwatch which is almost like a living creature. It tends to act like Rufus from "Kim Possible" and similar characters that pre-date that Disney cartoon, most of which tend to be animal companions. The guy would be living a pretty hum-drum life if it weren't for the fact that he has a voice in his head following him around and narrating the details of his every actions. And who is this mysterious British woman that narrates his life? Karen Eiffel(Emma Thompson), a chain-smoking woman with a severe case of writer's block who has a habit of killing off main characters in every book she writes, and may be a bit suicidal herself. Needless to say, Harold Crick is in deep doo-doo.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is Ana Pascal, a 1990's-style self-proclaimed anarchist who runs a coffee shop, and deliberately leaves behind a portion of her taxes so we can't defend the country against our enemies. This refusal to pay her taxes is what brings her to Crick's attention. Luckily, she makes these incredible cookies, and as you can expect from a movie like this, the two fall in love simply because they're opposites.
A lot of people have complained about Queen Latifah as the publishing company secretary Penny Escher, but I think she was important. She was a straight-woman to Eiffel's melancholia, and was sent by the company to rush Eiffel into finishing her book. Little do they know how much of a fatal mistake they'd be making if she succeeds.
While taking some time off on the request of his boss(Tom Hulce), and seeing a psychiatrist about his trouble, the shrink(played by Linda Hunt) recommends that Crick sees a literary professor named Jules Hilbert, as an alternative to psychotropic medication. Dustin Hoffman plays that literary professor, whom Crick seeks help in order to escape the wrath of Ms. Eifell. It's during one of those meetings that Crick finds out just who the woman controlling his destiny is, as the Professor leaves his TV running, showing an old interview on a show similar to C-Span's Book-TV. Puzzled as to why anybody would write about Crick, Hilbert suggests Crick staying at home and doing nothing. This fails miserably when construction workers tear his apartment down.
The movie takes a much more drastic turn when Ms. Eiffel discover's there really is a Harold Crick, who discovers that she's not the all-powerful, sinister puppet-master he thought she was. It makes me wonder how I'd react if I found any of my unpublished characters coming to life before my very eyes. It also makes me wonder if any of the other characters she created were real people. Of course, something else altogether different makes Eiffel decide the fate of Mr. Crick, and I really would rather let you find out what that is for yourself.
As other IMDb users have mentioned, this movie shows that Will Ferrell can get away with playing in other kinds of movies besides sophomoric comedies like "Anchorman" and "Talladega Nights," both of which had the same pacing, and the latter of which I liked much better. On the DVD there are a pair of extended scenes of some of the Book-TV type interviews used in the background in Professor Hilbert's office. Darlene Sunshine(Kirsten Chentworth) was attractive, but utterly annoying and stupid. In spite of that I still say it's worth picking up.