A quirky and utterly original treat for the thinking man's film-goer, featuring a welcome change of pace for its star...

Rating: 8/10 (7 April 2008)

STRANGER THAN FICTION is an offbeat and imaginative fantasy that is as intriguing a journey for the film-goer as it is a welcome change of pace for its star, Will Ferrell. Ferrell is cast dramatically against type as Harold Crick, a lonely and brilliant IRS agent who wakes up one day and hears a female voice narrating his life, which the pragmatic and completely practical Crick finds unsettling at first but learns to accept it to a point, until the day the narrator announces that he is going to die. We then learn that the narrator is actually a mentally-shredded, chain-smoking novelist named Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) with writer's block and that Harold is the main character in Eiffel's latest book. It is revealed that Eiffel always kills off her main characters but is stuck on how to do away with Harold. Meanwhile, Harold seeks the help of an eccentric college professor (Dustin Hoffman) in learning who this narrator is while tentatively pursuing a relationship with a free-spirited baker (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who he is auditing. The story reaches a fever pitch for the viewer as we become completely engulfed in this cat and mouse game of Harold trying to prevent his death before Eiffel can write it, but then the story veers in an unexpected direction that makes this challenging race for Harold's life even more riveting. The film features an intelligent screenplay and crisp direction and Will Ferrell is an absolute revelation here, creating a character like nothing he has done before. His Harold Crick has a mind like an Excel spreadsheet, but is also socially inept, hypersensitive, and full of suppressed dreams. For those who have hated Ferrell's work prior to this, I challenge you to give this film a try. Ferrell actually delivers a performance of depth and vulnerability that might surprise you. Gyllenhaal has never been more appealing on screen and Hoffman is quietly masterful as the know it all professor trying to figure out who the narrator is by learning who it isn't first. Thompson tended to grate on my nerves as Eiffel and Queen Latifah was miscast in the pointless role of her assistant, but it is the deft story and the surprisingly effective performance from Will Ferrell playing a normal human being that made this film a winner.