A good combination of comedy, drama, fantasy, and romance, with a surprising performance from Will Ferrell

Rating: 8/10 (9 August 2008)

I first saw "Stranger Than Fiction" in an independent theatre in December 2006. I had heard about the premise, and knew that Will Ferrell was in the starring role, though this sounded like a different kind of movie for him. I guess I was in for some surprises, which wasn't a bad thing, as it turned out to be a memorable experience. A few months ago, I watched "Old School", an earlier film featuring Ferrell, for the third time, and didn't care much for it anymore. The other week, I watched "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" for the second time. I wasn't too impressed with that one in the first place, and it didn't change much the second time. So, I felt it was a good time to revisit this film after those two, and it worked out well.
Harold Crick is a lonely IRS agent who lives a very repetitive lifestyle, which includes counting the brush strokes each morning when he brushes his teeth, and always just making it to the bus for work by the skin of his teeth. One day, he begins to hear a mysterious voice, narrating his life, a voice it turns out nobody else can hear, and it seems whoever this is can read his mind! This may sound like a symptom of schizophrenia, but in his case, it's not! He doesn't know this, but the voice he is hearing is the voice of an author named Karen Eiffel, who is writing a novel where Harold is the main character! She is unaware of the fact that Harold Crick exists in real life, and she is writing out the events in his life as they happen! Worse for Harold, this author tends to have her main characters killed in her books, and in her ignorance, she works with her assistant, Penny Escher, looking for a way to kill her main character, unaware that she will probably kill a real person if she does it!
"Stranger Than Fiction" is not perfect. It has some fairly tedious parts, such as the scene where Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) and Penny Escher (Queen Latifah) first meet, and the one in the bake shop, where tax resister Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal) insists Harold tries one of the cookies she has baked, and they get into a conversation, learning about each other. The script may also be a problem at times, but not usually. For the most part, the good outweighs the bad. There's a reasonable number of laughs, some small ones, some big ones. The first big laugh I found was the scene where Harold first hears the author's voice as he's brushing his teeth. The story is often suspenseful or emotional, especially towards the end, as we get to the climax.
What surprised me the most about the movie was Will Ferrell's performance as Harold Crick, seeing that he could play a role that's not 100% comedy! I think I prefer Jack Black as a comedian, but the remake of "King Kong" showed that he doesn't belong in straight roles, whereas this movie shows that's not quite the case with Ferrell! Ferrell is a polarizing comedian, some people find him amusing, while others hate him with a passion and look at his fans as inferior beings. Personally, before I saw "Stranger Than Fiction", I thought he was a reasonable entertainer in the comedy business, certainly not one of the best comedians of all time, but he sure could make me laugh. However, I never thought he could ever play a straight role, so this movie showed that even I underestimated his talents! You certainly shouldn't expect this movie to be another juvenile comedy, featuring the former "Saturday Night Live" comedian playing a total maniac, but in my opinion, it's a pretty good combination of comedy, drama, fantasy, and romance, and if you hate Ferrell, you just MIGHT gain respect for him as a performer after seeing this!