Wonderfully, imaginative film with an engaging performance by Will Farrell

Rating: 8/10 (19 May 2007)

"Stranger Than Fiction" is not such a strange film. It is a wonderfully, hopeful story, that has all kinds of delicious performances, especially Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. It has a lead character played by a restrained Will Farrell (in what easily could have been a Tom Hanks role about 10 years ago). And a beautiful Maggie Gyllenhall giving a thoughtful, winning performance.
Writer Zach Helm is asking us to think about the amount of control that we all have over our own lives. While we know that death can come at anytime, in any manner, we need to ask ourselves just what are we doing, or prepared to do with our lives?
Farrell plays Harold Crick, a straight laced auditor for the Internal Revenue Service. One day, thru the use of a voice-over, Harold hears someone talking. Not just talking, but talking about him, and what he did during the day, and in his past. Harold quickly realizes that this person who is talking about him, is an actual writer who is using Harold as a character in her new book.
To make matters worse, she is planning on killing him off in the last chapter. While the author has "flushed" his character out and made him more interesting (adding a love interest), Harold is still worried that he will be "written off". After all, she kills off all of the leading characters in her books.
Harold searches for the authoress to try to persuade her from using this unusual plot device.
I won't tell you how it ends,but I will tell you that, while it reminded me in many ways of "Adaptation", I found this film to be much more entertaining and accessible.
8 out of 10