Effortless perfection!

Rating: 10/10 (19 January 2007)

Effortless perfection! Director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Stay, Monster's Ball) deftly manipulates his audiences' feelings in the wonderful dramedy Stranger than Fiction. Precisely hitting all the notes in making an ensemble cast work, everything just seemed so carefully thought out without feeling contrivedthere is simply nothing to dislike about this film.
Will Ferrell very successfully transitions from his usual screwball comedic acts to sincere, sensitive and likable everyday IRS agent Harold Crick, who falls in love with his auditee, government-hater and bohemian baker Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal, who just marvelously disappeared into the role). Dustin Hoffman flawlessly plays literary expert Professor Jules Hilbert, whom Crick runs to for help to find out how to stop his life from ending as intimated to him by the voice in his head, while Queen Latifah was able to stand on her own as assistant Penny to Emma Thompson's eccentric tragic novelist Kay Eiffel, who is struggling with writer's block, trying to find out the best way to kill her lead character Crick.
Forster makes everything so easy to love: his recurring themes of contrast and interconnectivity blend smoothly with the refreshingly original story, the immensely talented actors that quietly dissolve into their characters (usually very difficult to suspend disbelief with a stellar cast), thoughtful set design (all calm neutrals in modernist designs) and a breathtaking indie-rock soundtrack (said to be this year's answer to Garden State's OST).
Here are a few of the incredibly killer lines:
Penny Escher: (looks at a pile of smoked cigarettes on Kay's desk) Did you smoke all of these? Kay Eiffel: No, they came pre-smoked.
Ana Pascal: Did you like the cookies? Harold Crick: Yes. Thank you for forcing me to eat them.
Harold Crick: (talking to Ana while holding a cardboard box with multiple small paper bags inside) I brought you flours.<---isn't this absolutely the sweetest??
Kay Eiffel: (narrating) And so he did what countless punk-rock songs had told him to do so many times before: he lived his life.
The line that saved the movie from triteness is a spoiler, so you will have to see the movie for yourself, on the big screen.
Stranger than Fiction is multidimensional; it's not just a clever movie, it makes you think about how you choose to live your life, every minute of every day.