Will Ferrell Movie:

		List Price: $38.96		Label: Sony Pictures Salesrank: 43526 Released: February 27, 2007
		Our Price: $19.29
		Used Price: $9.12
		MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Media: Blu-ray

Editorial Review:
An IRS auditor suddenly finds himself the subject of narration only he can hear: narration that begins to effect his entire life, from his work, to his love-interest, to his death.

Description of Stranger Than Fiction [Blu-ray]:
Much was written about Will Ferrell's first "dramatic role" as Harold Crick, an IRS auditor who begins hearing a voice narrating his life. But Stranger Than Fiction is hardly a drama. However, what Ferrell does--like Jim Carrey before him in The Truman Show--is handle a toned-down character with genuineness and affection: you believe he is this guy. Crick leads a lonely life filled with numbers and routines. While at first he considers the voice a nuisance, Crick decides more action is needed when it speaks of "his demise." Enter Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who takes on the absurd notion with revelry, trying to find out what kind of book Crick's life is leading. It turns out that the voice Crick is hearing belongs to Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), a very real--and troubled--author who is writing a book in which Crick is a fictional character. As usual with these things, the stuffed shirt learns to live a better life--Crick even falls for one of his audits, a brash baker named Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Marc Foster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland) has the right tone for the film, using great urban scenes (the unnamed city is Chicago) with interesting visualizations of Crick's world of numbers. He also directs Ferrell, Hoffman, and Gyllenhaal to their most charming performances (plus Linda Hunt and Tom Hulce pop up in two funny scenes). Ferrell succeeds in being a romantic lead you can root for; a scene where he eats Ana's freshly baked cookies is totally delightful without a hint of sarcasm. Screenwriter Zach Helm has two personal traits with his story: like Crick he followed his heart (he stopped rewriting scripts and only worked on his own) and like Eiffel, the final results are not a masterpiece, but good, and entertaining enough. Britt Daniel of the band Spoon worked on the dynamite soundtrack.--Doug Thomas

Extras from Stranger Than Fiction

"Counting Brush Strokes," A featurette on the filming of Stranger Than Fictionhigh bandwidth

Tax Man!: A clip from the film high bandwidth

Queen Latifah on working with Emma Thompson high bandwidth

Stills from Stranger Than Fiction (click for larger image)

Beyond Stranger Than Fiction on Amazon.com

Comic Actors Go Dramatic

CD Soundtrack

Emma Thompson Essentials

Stranger Than Fiction [Blu-ray] Reviews:
Restrained acting makes this effective
2009-12-12 - Harold, played with great restraint by Will Ferrell, is one of those obsessive-compulsive types who live lonely boring lives of desperation. He brushes his teeth using the exact same number of strokes each day, knots his tie the same way and catches the same bus on the way to his boring job at the IRS.

One day, Harold hears a voice in his head -- a woman's voice with an English accent, Emma Thompson's voice in fact -- narrating his life as it happens. "Little did he know," the voice intones, "that Harold's actions have put him on a course to his own death."

The acting in this movie is uniformly good with Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah and Maggie Gyllenhaal all contributing. Ferrell is better here than I've ever seen him; he makes us see the true goodness of his character buried deeply beneath the facade and his yearning to live. The premise is interesting and the movie asks some important questions: what is more important, life or literature? How do you live a life to make it worth living? We learn that Thompson is a famous author wrestling with writer's block and a life almost as empty as Harold's. But this movie never gets freighted down with philosophy as it barrels along to its satisfying conclusion.
Well worth an evening in front of the boob tube....

Weird Tales !
2009-12-10 - Marc Forster (Finding Neverland (Widescreen Edition)) directs a strange tale of a man who discovers he's a character in a novel!

Will Ferrell's character, Harold Crick, has been going through life for the last ten years as an auditor for the IRS, methodical, counts every step, times himself to precision. He even counts the brush strokes while brushing his teeth and has the single slip knot tie science down.

One day he finds he has a narrator and discovers he is the main character in a novel, by a woman (Emma Thompson as Kay Eiffel) who's trying to figure out how to kill him off but she can't get rid of her writer's block.

As she chain smokes and downs vodka in an attempt to discover the proper way to wrap the plot, Crick finds that he must stop this author at all costs. His life depends on it. As the narrator gets loud and he's the only person who can hear it, he yells at it, looks for it, and finally begs for help to figure out who is narrating his life before it's too late.

Interesting premise by screenwriter Zack Helm harkens to a story I recall reading from L. Ron Hubbard, published back in the 1940s called Typewriter in the Sky (Typewriter in the Sky).

Both books pertain to a guy who finds himself living a fictional story. Both characters are struggling with not dying but trying to change the plot before their respective authors kill them off. And of course they both have occupations that no one likes: Pirate and a Tax Collector.

Well, as an analogy, Isaac Asimov's galactic empire and George Lucas' Star Wars galactic empire are similar as well. [Compare: The Foundation Trilogy and Star Wars Trilogy

The stories between Zach's and Hubbard's are overall dissimilar in many other ways. Harold Crick has actually come to life in modern times, actually meets his author and attempts to change his fate and then comes to accept it as the only way. But it plays out differently and has a cute ending which I won't reveal of course.

Dustin Hoffman (Tootsie - 25th Anniversary Edition) plays the literary professor who at first thinks Harold is nuts but then plays along and finds that perhaps Harold actually is hearing a narrator. The professor is convinced that Harold must die for the good of the plot.

It's a lot of fun seeing the character changing before the viewer's eyes. Harold was introverted, alone, methodical and on a rat race treadmill. When the treadmill was shaken he did all he could to build a better mouse trap.

Philosophically, we can look at the tale as a disregard for fate, that we are not predestined to lead a certain path but can choose our own paths.

Ferrell, with Maggie Gyllenhaal (she's great as the romantic lead, Ana, and you've seen her in: The Dark Knight (Two-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy with Exclusive Steelbook Packaging) ~ Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Aaron Eckhart (DVD - Dec 9, 2008)) and Queen Latifa (Bringing Down The House (Widescreen Edition)) make for a fun cast.

The humor is there, dark at times, and a bit of toilet humor (it is 2006 after all) make for an entertaining picture that you really must see.

The DVD has plenty of features, several extended and deleted scenes and interviews with the cast and crew that really show the love they had for this film.

I really liked the music as well -- "Give a little time for the child within you." Great stuff, quite endearing.

The filmed interviews, one used in the film, had a critic book show called The Book Channel, with Darlene Sunshine. Darlene won't let a little thing like research or even reading a book stop her from having a good time interviewing authors who appear on her show. Hilarious.

Other movies by director Marc Forster:

Quantum of Solace (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Monster's Ball





I dont' get it
2009-11-06 - Just one question: What was the business with the watch? The only purpose I could see for it was that it saved Harold's life in the end, but other than that, what did it have to do with the plot?

Wonderful
2009-10-29 - I had no idea what to expect when I rented this DVD. It looked quite interesting on the trailer so it was a, "Why not?" sort of a rent. And I loved it. I absolutely loved every aspect of this movie. The script was so clever I was savoring every dialogue. The casting was perfect down to the t. Nobody could have played Emma Thompson's character like she did. There's a scene where she talks about a fantastically depressing book that she'd read while researching death...haha~ who else could deliver such a line? Nobody could have played Dustin Hoffman's character - a college professor and the only person who actually believes and tries to help out Will Farrell's character who claims he hears his life being narrated by a woman. The process that he goes through to help out Will's character is ridiculous yet so logical. Get this. Since Will is in some sort of literature (or so he says) Dustin uses his literary expertise to help figure out the genre of the literature thus figuring out how his story/life will unfold. That is ingenious writing at its best, wouldn't you say? I love that Will Farrell plays Harold, the main character, in this. He's known more for his obnoxious comedy but I think this kind of role really suits him. I think he possesses a unique vulnerability that makes him so likable and perfect for this particular role. The comedic inserts throughout the film isn't the kind where you laugh out loud. It's the subtle kind where you just smile and go 'dang, that was a clever line!' I highly recommend it for those who enjoy a good play with words. Let me just say that I'm now the proud owner of this DVD.

See it
2009-10-16 - This is actually now my favorite movie of all time, I enjoy the theme of changing one's life and the actions that occur as a result. Will Ferrel is usually not who i'd expect to be rooting for, but I was - an impressive movie and a total sleeper hit.