Will Ferrell singing... nice!

Rating: 9/10 (22 July 2007)

Harold Crick is an IRS auditor who leads a very measured, predictable and precise kind of life--so precise that he does things on the dot and counts trivial details like the number of his brushstrokes (36 up and downs, 36 side by sides). He lives in a pleasant cycle until one day he realizes something is wrong--he starts hearing the voice of the narrator dictating almost every step he makes. Little did he know that he is merely a character in someone's novel.
Marc Foster's metafictional story about the interconnection of a character exhibiting a classic case of a contemporary corporate desensitization and a novelist experiencing a writer's block works on the same plane as Sam Mendes's American Beauty--it's a story about someone being reawakened, realizing that he hasn't lived his life the way he wanted it to be. The moment that Harold Crick hears his narrator explicitly telling him that his death is imminent, he freaks out and takes a vacation from his monotonous life.
And he did make everything different. Will Ferrell's acting is surprisingly subtle--considering how wacky he can get in his other films. His tandem with Maggie Gyllenhaal's character Ana Pascal, an intelligent/radical baker who chose to bake cookies and breads (to make the world a better place), is surprisingly effective and at times, though embarrassing to admit, giggle/kilig-inducing.
And there is also this issue whether the narrator Kay Eiffel is writing Harold's story as a tragedy or a comedy. When Harold realizes that he's being driven to make his life better and fall in love with Ana, he thinks that he's definitely in a comedy. But while seeking the help of the character played by Dustin Hoffman, Dr. Jules Hilbert, a literature professor who helps Harold get his way out of this strange literary labyrinth, he tells Harold that the narrator of his story Kay Eiffel, whom HIlbert has taught a class on, is notorious for killing her novels' main characters.
As he continues to understand his role in the story, Harold Crick's wrist watch continues to click and tick to his climactic death. And so there goes the million dollar question: will Harold Crick be able to stop his narrator from killing him?