Excellent Film

Rating: 10/10 (11 November 2006)

Stranger Than Fiction was excellent. The characters are well developed and strong, the plot -- superb and surprising, and the dialogue-- witty and true. Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) seems, at the beginning of the movie, to be a stereotypical sub-genius living the boring lonely office life of a IRS agent. Yet, he is not introduced as a man who is tired with his life and he doesn't really go though some major midlife crisis, which one comes to expect with such characters of Cricks age. No, when he unexpectedly meets up with the knowledge of his own death, given to him by the third person omniscient narrator whom he hears in his one mind (Emma Thomson), Crick does not decide that he wants to live; he simply decides that he does not want to die.
At first glance, each character seems far fetch and overly rambunctious. But as the story unfolds the characters become real. The outspoken baker who wishes to express her political views in any way she can (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the eccentric novelist who has a terrible case of writers' block (Emma Thompson), and the infatuated and unusually wise English professor who tries desperately to find the fate of Herald Crick (Dustin Hoffman) are people that we have met and see often; they may even be our friends. And they do become our friends in this delightfully entertaining and surprisingly thought provoking film.