Harold Crick isn't crazy, he's just written that way

Rating: 7/10 (28 February 2007)

Emma Thompson's impeccable, blunt narration treads inventively on the poetic excellence of the writing behind "Stranger Than Fiction", a Kaufmanesque attempt by Zach Helm. Here is a story about IRS agent Harold Crick, a calculating, lonely man whose favourite word is "integer", who for years has led a sedate and ordered life. One day his wristwatch tires of his existence and Harold begins to hear a woman narrating his life, disrupting the mathematical symmetry of the film which propels the film.
"Stranger Than Fiction" plays along a unique, inventive concept about the fickleness of identity as the author struggles to kill Harold Crick at the end of her novel with all of the morbid obsessions that this task entails. It is fact and fiction merging in a rotating scale of existential questions embedded in tragicomic dilemmas. It truly is a funny film masking as a comedy, but which becomes unexpectedly poignant toward the end, without dwelling too much on its poignancy like most Hollywood films fall prey to.
That is not to say it is an infallible film. Will Ferrell is unmistakably numb, almost as if he is actively struggling to curb his eccentric mannerisms and loud voice. Judging by the plethora of different situational comedy the film hedges around its protagonist, it becomes clear that it expects us to find his mere reactions side-splittingly funny, which is rather lazy writing and ineffective for non-fans of Ferrell. The humour is mostly in-tune in a classic sit-com kind of way  without the canned laughter  but it occasionally falls flat with a thud to the floor.
The characters' last names are undeniably significant  Crick, Pascal, Eiffel, Escher, Banneker, Kronecker, Cayly, etc. are all puns on mathematicians and scientists who devoted themselves to the innate order of things. To support them are a wide array of charismatic actors such as Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman. Gyllenhaal plays a girl who is a militantly non-conformist, free-thinking tattooed girl around the corner whom Harold is set to audit. At times she feels too much of an obnoxious counterculture ploy to "set the protagonist free", but gradually she is given layers in the story. Hoffman is a worthy contribution as ever, playing a professor in literature who helps Harold identify the nature of the novel.
"Stranger than Fiction" should have been more entertaining, but its clever concept alone gets it a long way. Where characters usually struggle with inner demons in internal conflicts, Harold Crick's external conflict is just as important -- his impending death.
7 out of 10