2006 fantasy dramedy lacks internal logic

Rating: 4/10 (25 June 2020)

With fantasy films, there needs to be an internal logic that makes the premise plausible. Usually an external event or character disrupts the protagonist's world, creating an alternative universe in which the protagonist must navigate and gain insight: Back to the Future (time traveling car), Wizard of Oz (malevolent tornado); It's a Wonderful Life (Guardian Angel). Stranger than Fiction lacks the internal logic of these other films; no alternative universe is created. Rather the fantasy character Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), the fastidious numbers crunching IRS agent, suddenly discovers he's part of novelist Karen Eiffel's (Emma Thompson) latest novel and becomes a real person in her world! So the idea of the fictional character becoming part of the real world lacks credibility and reduces Crick to a character you cannot take seriously. Had it been the other way around, with Eiffel finding herself in the fictional novel she's been writing, that might have worked a lot better!

Crick is depicted as a faceless bureaucrat, whose life is ordered by numbers. When he starts hearing Eiffel's voice in his head, he consults a couple of therapists to find out what's wrong with him but is eventually referred to Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), a "literature expert" who finally buys the idea that Crick has come to life out of the exertions of a novelist. It's a silly idea with a professor accepting such a nonsensical idea but this is the logic neophyte screenwriter Zach Helm has handed to us!

The bulk of the film involves Crick's involvement with Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a young bakeshop owner whom he must audit. It turns out that Ana has refused to pay part of her taxes in the last few years as a sort of protest against a cold-hearted government, which has failed to live up to her left-leaning, Socialist beliefs. Of course Ana ends up transforming Crick into a mensch, who dispenses with his number-crunching ways, and develops a "personality."

Meanwhile, the big question is whether Eiffel will kill off Crick as she has done with her previous characters in all her prior novels. The publishing company assigns an assistant, Penny Escher (Queen Latifah), to help her finish the novel (if you can believe that). Crick finally finds Eiffel and begs her not to kill him off but after consulting with Hilbert, he accepts the idea that Eiffel's outline (in which she kills Crick off), is "just right."

Fortunately Eiffel changes her mind, and we're left with a happy ending, in which Crick survives and I guess becomes a real person (please ask screenwriter Helm how?). The diverse cast does its best with the flimsy material. That includes Ferrell in a more "straight-acting" role.