Moving drama

Rating: 8/10 (11 November 2006)

STF is a drama, not a comedy, about an IRS schmuck (Will Ferrell) who starts hearing a voice in his head. The voice belongs to a deranged author (Emma Thompson) who is suffering from writer's block and very slowly spinning a yarn about the schmuck with eventual plans to kill him, as she has done to the protagonists of her previous eight books. The schmuck understandably doesn't want to die, and goes in search of this mystery voice in his head. Along the way, he meets a winsome bakery owner (Maggie Gyllenhall) who helps him take charge of his own fate, more or less. Dustin Hoffman, sporting one hell of a Captain Kirk toupee, plays a coffee-snorting literary professor who helps the schmuck sort out what kind of story he is in, in order to figure out the author's identity. Hoffman is hysterical, Ferrell is tightly controlled as the schmuck slowly coming out of his shell, and Gyllenhall is just about the sexiest baker on the planet -- except for a really gruesome tattoo on her right arm, marking her feminist spirit. Linda Hunt has a tiny role as the schmuck's shrink, and an unrecognizable Tom Hulce plays the schmuck's strange human resources manager. A very good movie, but it is definitely not a comedy, even with quite a few laughs. So, as such, be prepared for a shock or two. The trailers for it stressed the few comic moments. The studio evidently did not want you to know it is a drama, along the lines of the director's previous STAY or that Malkovich movie with John Cusack or that Japanese hootenanny with Bill Murray.