A new breed of rom-com

Rating: 9/10 (18 December 2006)

The romantic comedy has come in many guises from screwball to sex. Now we have a different aspect of love; the metaphysical rom-com. Actually, it's a genre that's been around for a few years now, through "Groundhog Day" and "The Truman Show" to, more recently, "I Heart Huckabees" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". Charlie Kaufmann is it's principal progenitor. The films play out like science-fiction but they are anchored in a much more earthly, literary world. The debt these films owe is more to James Joyce than Issac Assimov and it's no accident that in both "Adaptation", which made free with the concept of an author and his characters inhabiting the same landscape, and now "Stranger than Fiction", one of the principal characters is a writer.
In some respects "Stranger than Fiction" is a decidedly old-fashioned film. It's a boy-meets-girl movie where the fate of the boy and girl hinges on the intervention of a third party. (In the thirties and forties this would have been an eccentric millionaire played by Charles Coburn). But now we have moved into the era of the metaphysical romantic comedy and here the third party is a writer and the boy is a character in her novel. He also happens to be real and while he is aware he is a character in a novel, (and none too happy about it), she isn't aware that her character is a living, breathing person. This is smart stuff up to a point but had it just been one-sided the concept would have worn itself out. It's when the character introduces himself to the author that the film really kicks in.
If this all sounds terribly high-brow, esoteric and confusing, don't worry, it isn't. It's smart, clever, funny and genuinely romantic. The character, Harold, is Will Ferrell and he's a stuffed shirt but you know five minutes after meeting him that the starch is going to be taken out of that shirt and when you clasp eyes on Maggie Gyllenhall's kooky pastry chef you know she's the girl to do it. Both players are first-rate. Ferrell develops a real person out of his character and adds a dimension to his playing that he hasn't shown before while Gyllenhall oozes sex appeal. She tries to act tough but never quite makes it. There is a sexy little girl inside and Ferrell knows how to draw her out.
There is also excellent work from Emma Thompson as the eccentric, chain-smoking author with writer's block and from Dustin Hoffman as the literary guru whose advice Ferrell seeks. Hoffman has a marvellous scene when he argues that Ferrell should allow his character to be killed off because that way the book will be 'a masterpiece'. The scene is highly ridiculous but Hoffman plays it with the straightest of straight faces relishing every syllable. The director, Marc Forster, has already shown he can mesh the real with the phantasmagorical in "Finding Neverland". Here he handles the twists and turns of Zach Helm's marvellous script with consummate ease. I absolutely loved it.