Movie's Trailer As Good As Entire Film / Will Ferrel is V. Good

Rating: 7/10 (1 December 2006)

"Stranger than Fiction" is one of those movies where seeing the coming attraction is almost as good as seeing the entire movie.
Author Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson), unbeknownst to her, exercises control over the life of IRS tax officer Harold Crick (Will Ferrel).
Crick hears Eiffel's voice narrating his life, and becomes especially concerned when she begins to plot his death.
Crick seeks help from a psychiatrist (Linda Hunt) who tells him he is schizophrenic, and from a college literature professor (Dustin Hoffman) who tries to understand if his life is a comedy -- which will lead to marriage and the creation of the next generation -- or a tragedy, which will end in death.
Meanwhile, Crick meets Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a baker who declines to pay her taxes. Romance blooms.
The movie is cute, and it is funny.
Emma Thompson reminds us what a woman who is also a movie star can do. Thompson is commanding, riveting, interesting, engaging -- everything the teenage, arm candy, female cupcake of the moment -- you know their names -- could never be.
Queen Latifah, as her assistant, is given the transparent role of secret sharer, the character who exists solely to give Thompson someone to talk out loud to. And Latifah is given exactly NOTHING else to do. This film's waste of Queen Latifah should be a legal offense, requiring the paying of a hefty fine.
Dustin Hoffman is wonderful to watch; he just gets better and better. One could do worse than resolve to go see Hoffman's performance in any new movie.
The movie is talky, but the director gives his characters funny bits to perform, to entertain the viewer's eyes while characters did little more than talk. Hoffman, for example, is a coffee addict, and this is communicated wonderfully. Thompson is a cigarette addict; her addiction is communicated in more disgusting fashion.
Will Ferrel is a revelation. Gone is the goofball comic prancing in his underwear. He portrays a numbers idiot savant who probably has Asperger's syndrome with complete dedication and never breaks character. He made me laugh in "Ricky Bobby;" he made me care in "Stranger than Fiction." Maggie Gyllenhall is Maggie Gyllenhall, a flat nosed young woman who thinks she is smarter and more special than she is. You can practically smell her performance as a bratty, pretentious, hippy baker; you can practically taste her armpit hairs that fall into her brownies.
So far so good.
The problem is the movie does very little with its very clever plot device. In fact, it doesn't do much more with it than is done in the film's trailers. And that's too bad.