My views, flawed film with good performances

Rating: 6/10 (4 December 2006)

Its taken me some time process this film but now i think my views are s follows:
It was merely 'okay'. I admit i hate Will Farrell, his films are generally senseless and remarkably unfunny however here he was okay . As for Maggie, well she's great as always though i do not buy for a second that the two of them could be a couple. I don't see it at all. She's absurdly out of his league. Then there's the fact that a fictional character exists, i'm sure this is old hat, and has been done before i just can't put my finger quite on where. It's not original at all really, it just made me think about the other characters who appear in the book, like Maggie. Surely Harold would of realized from reading that his girlfriend is also fictional....in this regard i found the love story pretty hollow. The author could of changed it at any minute. I couldn't quite just sit and think 'ok, he's real' because i was struck by so many questions. When did he come into being? When the story started? If the book had no details about his childhood etc surely he'd have massive memory loss? Its just a bit too unbelievable and i apologizes as i know i'm not explaining myself well. It's like the writer had a intelligent idea but only thought about it briefly. As for the question as to if he should of been killed i'm saying yes. As anyone who has seen 'Pan's labyrinth ' will know the hero/death storyline is a must. I thought that really Harold should of died as Virgina Woolf character says in 'The hours' he had to die to make the others respect life more. In other words the characters in Harolds book, their lives, don't seem to mean as much now Harold is still alive.
To conclude, not as clever as it thinks and a story which, upon trying to explain out, makes your mind hurt as by thinking about logic you've already done more thinking than the writer.