This is not a “Will Ferrell” movie. You know what I am talking about. If you are looking for a movie where Will Ferrell does pretty much anything he normally does (we’re not counting Melinda and Melinda here), then this one is not for you. If you are looking for just a plain good movie with some laughs, then Stranger Than Fiction will probably work perfectly.
Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, a IRS agent whose life is ruled by numbers. He counts the number brush strokes with an OCD- like obsession. At work, people shoot out large multiplication problems to him (hey, they sounded large to me, so lay off) and he almost instantly shoots the product back (See, I used “product”, a math term. I didn’t even have to look it up). He has no friends outside of work and generally leads an nondescript life.
Until he hears the narrator.
One day while brushing his teeth, Harold hears someone narrating…his life. This only borders on annoying until the voice announces that the act of resetting his wristwatch would, “result in his imminent death.” Other people can’t hear the voice and rejects craziness as the answer posed by psychiatrists because, “the voice isn’t speaking to [him], but about [him] and with a better vocabulary.” Deciding that his problem isn’t mental, but literary, Harold goes to visit a English professor, Professor Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) to find out what kind of story he is in and the identity of the narrator.
The narrator is, in fact, Kay Eiffel, a blocked writer in who is trying to find a way to kill her latest character, Harold Crick. Kay is played wonderfully by Emma Thompson (whose name I had to look up, because ever since I watched a certain episode of Geekdrome, I could only think of her as “the female Kenneth Branaugh”). Professor Hilbert tries to help Harold decide whether he is in a comedy or a tragedy and the movie does the same thing throughout. I knew it wasn’t going to be a typical Will Ferrell slapstick feature, yet about a third of the way in, I was kind of hoping it was, then I found myself so enveloped in the characters and the plot (of the plot) that I thought using this movie for cheap laughs was beneath it. Not to say it doesn’t have its funny moments, but they are subtle and often dialog based.
What really draws you in is the same thing that consumes Harold-what the ending is going to be. In this movie Ferrell shows himself to be a very versatile actor, a comedic actor, but a versatile comedic actor. He can do the over-the-top laughs of Zoolander, but he can also do the simple, subtle comedy of this movie. Dustin Hoffman is Dustin Hoffman. Emma Thompson proves that she can fill whatever roll she wants by playing the eccentric, chainsmoking Eifell (and displays a lot of courage by looking absolutely horrible on screen). The movie even includes the great Maggie Gyllenhall as Crick’s potential love interest/audit subject.
In short (actually this has been one of my longer reviews) this is a great movie. It is more than competently directed by Marc Forster of Finding Neverland and Monster’s Ball. If you are looking for hilarity, change your expectations, make it through the first third (more like quarter really) and stay through the whole thing. You’ll be glad you did.
Rated: PG-13 for some disturbing images, sexuality, brief language and nudity.
[rating:4]