Slow and boring.

Rating: 3/10 (25 November 2006)

It's been a while since I've wanted to walk out in the middle of a movie like I did last night when I saw "Stranger Than Fiction". I wanted to, but didn't because my friend insisted that I give this movie a chance. I did and, boy, was I sorry I did. Not a very original story: a cold, structured businessman meets a fun-loving, carefree young woman who gives him something to live for. When he discovers he is just a character in a story that ends with him dying in the near future, he searches for the author to ask her to keep him alive.
I'm not sure how this film got such high marks because I saw so many things in it that bothered me. Besides its slow pacing, pretentiousness and its unnecessary inclusion of Queen Lattifah's character, this film failed to explain a lot. How did Harold Crick come to life? If he was a character in Kay's book, what about all the people he met during the course of his life? Why weren't they also characters in her book too? How could some parts of his life be in the book and others not? I'm sure some may think I'm being nit-picky, but if this film addressed these questions instead of trying to be a pretentious, hackneyed film about a man finding more substance in his life, it would've been a lot more interesting.