great smart fun!

Rating: 9/10 (21 March 2007)

Will Ferrell temporarily withdraws from his usual comic shtick and persona to play the predictably dull IRS auditor, Harold Crick, in Marc Forster's "Stranger than Fiction". One day this man of rigid ritual, who literally sees the world through its system of numbers and dimensionality, hears a voice narrating his every basic movement. His quest to find the producer of that voice leads him bumbling through a number of encounters, including one with an attractive theoretical anarchist played by Maggie Gyllenhaal and a literary expert played by Dustin Hoffman. The performances are strong, especially Will Ferrell. His performance here resembles everything his standard work does not, with the surprising exception of a few overtly innocent moments during "Elf".
There's a lot going on in this sophisticated film that makes sharing too much of the premise feel like taking away part of its charm, while on the other hand sharing that same premise is exactly why most people would care. There are echoes of the Charlie Kaufman penned "Adaptation", with its meta-cinema presentation and it's spot-on analysis of the schizophrenic mental state of a writer. As taken through the always dependable lens of director Marc Forster ("Monster's Ball" & "Finding Neverland") first time screenwriter Zach Helm's script is a well-executed, intelligent, and clever piece of storytelling. The third act drags on too long, but "Stranger than Fiction" is still a refreshing, original work.