Life on Audio Commentary

Rating: 9/10 (17 April 2007)

This film is one of the greatest of 2006. Certainly Will Ferrell's best since ELF. He stars as tax auditor Harold Crick, a dull man who does everything being obsessed about numbers, doing equations in his his head, etc. He is constantly and silently critiqued by his wristwatch who is as human as Harold is not. Then one morning, while brushing his 32 teeth 72 times (once up and down, second side to side) he begins to hear a woman's voice narrating his life driving him to the point of depressing insanity. One day, he hears her mention that just by resetting his watch would send him to his untimely . He is terrified until he meets a literary expert named Dr. Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) who helps him sort through stories he might be in or stories he's not in after he learns that she began her prophecy with the third-person omniscient phrase, "Little did he know..." The woman narrating is Karen "Kay" Eiffel (Emma Thompson), an eccentric and isolated author with writer's block, who spends every spare moment contemplating her in various situations (jumping off a building, crashing her car through a bridge and careening off and drowning) who receives an unwanted assistant named Penny Escher (Queen Latifah) who vows to help her finish her book % and Taxes" by quietly and gladly off a fictional character named...Harold Crick.
Beneath all this is a romantic subplot between shy, inner-self Harold and a rebellious baker he's auditing, Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who she hates and does anything to ridicule and embarrass, even forcing him to sort through a box full of receipts and making him eat an unwanted cookie.
This film is brilliant, making you think. Dustin Hoffman's character and Emma Thompson's characters are remarkably the same. Will Ferrell is clever, convincing audiences that he really is hearing a narrator. Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance of Ana is a bit far-fetched and expected but well worth it.
As it is said in the movie by Prof. Hilbert, "The thing to determine conclusively is whether you're in a comedy or a tragedy. Have you met anyone who simply loathes the very core of you?" Harold responds dead-pan, "Prof. Hilbert, I'm an IRS agent. Everyone hates me." Hilbert responds, "Well, that sounds like a comedy."