Very well done romantic comedy.

Rating: Null/10 (24 March 2007)

I often find Will Ferrell hard to watch, because I get tired of his comic schtick very quickly. But his role here as Harold Crick is totally different, and I found him very enjoyable. Much as Jim Carrey or Robin Williams playing serious roles. Crick is an IRS auditor and a person who lives alone in a very sparse apartment. In fact, it looks like a motel room. He does everything with a purpose, a certain number of tooth brush strokes, a certain number of steps to get to the bus stop without wasting any time.
One morning he hears a voice narrating his activities, as if it were being read from a book. Every detail. The voice is Emma Thompson's as famous novelist Karen Eiffel, but only he can hear it. She is writing a book with a main character named Harold Crick, and is stuck, not sure how to end it, not certain how to kill Harold Crick.
Dustin Hoffman is Professor Jules Hilbert who tries to help Crick sort things out, in often very funny ways. Maggie Gyllenhaal is bakery owner Ana Pascal who is being audited by Crick, and of whom Crick begins to take a liking. So he brings her a dozen flours (not flowers). Queen Latifah is good as Penny Escher, the assistant that the publisher sends to Eiffel to help her meet the deadline.
The whole movie is good strange in the same way that 'Being John Malkovich' is good strange. You know this can't really happen, but it is fun to think 'what if.' The whole movie is about whether Crick can survive his being killed by the author, whose narration appears to be accurately describing everything about Crick and his life. Also, whether Crick and Pascal can make romantic sparks.
SPOILERS. There is a scenario written where Crick will be killed by a bus as he tried to rescue a young boy who darts out into the street on his bike. But after Eiffel meets Crick, and now has a real person in her thoughts, she cannot kill him as she would a genuinely fictional character. So she re-writes the end, he saves the boy and only gets injured badly, and he and Pascal become a couple.