Zany story built of nonsense that is very funny if you don't analyze the plot

Rating: 8/10 (27 December 2006)

A delightful confection made of pure nonsense, this romantic comedy features an outrageous screenplay, by Zack Helm, that rivals the zany imaginings in Charlie Kaufman's scripts for "Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is a gangly, nerdish bachelor IRS agent who is obsessed with numbers (his favorite word is "integer"), a math savant who can solve complex arithmetic problems instantly in his head. His most prized possession is a hi-tech wristwatch. Every one of his daily routines involves split-second timing to save up the minutes forwell, nothing in particular, since his life is utterly sterile, devoid of friends and interests.
One day Harold's pristine world is invadedby a voice, a woman's voice, a voice with an English accent that narrates his every move as he makes it. Try as he might, he cannot shake the voice. He consults a shrink (Helen Hunt, in a fine little cameo in which she assures him he has schizophrenia); he takes a vacation, but nothing works. Finally he consults a literature professor, Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), after someone suggests that he may somehow have become a character in a novel being written by the woman whose voice has begun to ordain his conduct. Hilbert asks a bunch of questions to try to discern a pattern that would allow him to accurately peg the identity of such an author.
In fact the notion that he is a character in a novel proves to be true, and the novelist in question is the celebrated Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), who has been suffering through an agonizing case of writer's block in pursuing her new manuscript aboutyesHarold Crick, of course, the bachelor IRS nerd. She's stuck trying to find a way to kill him off (the protagonist in every one of her highly successful books dies). The publishers are so concerned as Eiffel falls further and further behind the deadline for completion that they send over their in-house special assistant/baby sitter for blocked authors, Penny Escher (Queen Latifah), who tries to soothe the agitated, chain smoking Eiffel and pull her through to success.
The other pivotal character in this crazy yarn is the woman who becomes Harold's unlikely love interest: Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a casual, tattooed, New Agey bakery owner who at first glance seems to be everything Harold is not. He only meets her when her case of underpaid taxes comes up for audit and is assigned to him. They form an intense mutual dislike at first, but all of that gradually changes.
So how is this weird predicament going to be resolved? Where does life leave off and fiction begin? Life emulating art emulating life, and so on. Is Harold inexorably doomed to whatever fate Eiffel has in store for him, assuming she can break through her block to have anything at all in store? I'll leave you with these existential questions to mull over. If you see this film, prepare yourself in advance by repeating at least 100 times: "I will not suffer trying to make any sense of this story; I will simply yield to its pleasures." My grades: 7.5/10 (low B+) (Seen on 12/26/06)