Wonderful, Warm, Witty Writing

Rating: 9/10 (5 April 2008)

This movie has everything to make it a winner. Great acting by Will Ferrell in a role that is unlike any other he has had and allows him to play the perfect part, both serious and funny within one character who grows on you. He plays a man who learns that he is literally a character in an author's book and can hear her narrating his life as he lives it. As the plot unfolds he realizes that she is planning his death and his only hope is to let her know that he knows about her, and to let her know he is real.
It is a rare film where the writing is so clean and crisp that it keeps you going forward through some twists and turns that might otherwise lose you and is a joy to see unfold.
There are a few stumbles along the way through the middle where you're not sure you want things to go where they go, and in the ending when you realize that the writer's writer has written the perfect ending and it's a letdown when that gets changed...then you realize that you did have both! It all seems "preposterous", but then you realize that the whole premise is preposterous! And that the only reason you are shocked is that the writing thus far has been so great that you've actually come to believe the impossible.
All in all it is a wonderful film that is well worth watching, especially for anyone who has ever been or ever aspired to be a writer, for such great lines as the sound of files brushing against each other sounding like the sound of waves on sand.
Watch and enjoy and take away the message (a bit preachy at the end) that your life is a blank book waiting for you to write on it with the footprints of your dancing through it with joy even at the most mundane moments.