Very Slick

Rating: 9/10 (22 December 2007)

"Stranger Than Fiction" (2006) fits into the tiny sub-genre of recent "the tax-man needs love too" films, which includes "Exotica" (1994) and "Off the Map" (2003). And since nothing of real consequence happens in this moral tale of a film, you could make a case for it being like Eric Rohmer's "My Night With Maude" (insert sequences of serio-comic triviality here). Although I can see why some people compare it to "The Hours" (2002) it is really a variation on "Adaptation" (2002) and its various allegorical elements.
As in "Adaptation" you have a stalled character going to a literary professional for advice. Instead of troubled screenwriter Charlie Kaufman seeking advice from adaptation guru Robert McKee, you have IRS agent Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) contacting literature professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman). Which serves as an excuse to utilize a vast store of insider jokes about screen writing/fiction writing.
Maggie Gyllenhaal was in both films. In "Stranger Than Fiction" she plays Harold love interest, Ana Pascal, the irreverent owner of a bakery. This is one of the all-time best film romances and it owes a lot Director Marc Forster's casting of these two actors. It's a quirky and sideways path to romance and is sold by Ferrell's trademark lack of guile and Gyllenhaal's way of teasing a role.
As in "Adaptation" the wrapped too tight hero might be schizophrenic; but instead of a fast living unpretentious twin brother, Harold hears a woman author's narration in his head; and she is narrating a highly accurate account of Harold's day-to-day existence. The voice is actually that of Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), a slightly suicidal author struggling with writer's block. Her prior books have all ended with the death of her main character (insert "The Hours" here) and she is struggling with just how to dispatch Harold in the book she is currently writing. Harold is clued to his ultimate fate when her narration uses the phrase "little did he know". Both Ana and Jules nicely display the dichotomy between the passion of their creativity and the reserve of their analysis and critique.
Once he knows his fate Harold begins making positive changes in his life style, which culminates in his romance with Ana. So you get the standard "stop and smell the roses" theme, a bit of a "free will vs destiny" theme, and finally the principal question: If the novel Kay is writing would be a masterpiece only if it ends in Harold's death, what right does he have continue his life? And the secondary question once Kay understands the implications of a tragic ending: Can she assume the responsibility of sacrificing another life as the necessary cost of producing a masterpiece?
The production design in "Stranger Than Fiction" is nothing to get excited about but it does not distract from the story. There is some distraction by the effects people who periodically overlay cute little graphics to illustrate Harold compulsive need to count things and set things in order. But it is all in the service of character development.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.