‘Stranger Than Fiction’

Will Ferrell, taking on less hilarious fare than usual, makes this film work by keeping his character always on the edge of breaking out.

By: Bob Brown
   We are all living our lives as a novel. We are the hero of our story. The trouble is, chance has a way of interrupting the plot. And that can be fatal, considering we all have a limited time to write the final chapters.
   Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) hears a voice narrating his life as he’s living it, one brush-stroke at a time. His life is literally someone else’s novel, the writer Kay Eiffel’s (Emma Thompson). But at this point, Kay has writer’s block and can’t find a fitting end. Since all her novels finish with the hero’s death, this poses a dilemma for Harold, who hasn’t thought that far ahead himself.
   The unusual conceit for this film, directed by Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland) from a script by newcomer Zach Helm, is almost too clever for its own good. You have to buy into the off-screen narrator premise or the rest doesn’t follow. Once you do, however, the movie grows on you. The casting leads you to expect a certain level of comic silliness. It’s Will Ferrell, for gosh sake, he of Saturday Night Live and Elf and Talladega Nights.
   Here, Ferrell plays a very bland IRS functionary who plods through life like clockwork. One of the film’s key metaphors is Harold’s watch, which times every minute of his waking day and rules even his coffee breaks. The film’s special-effects team has plotted out Harold’s tooth-brushing (32 strokes per side), his walks to the bus stop, and his workday with a grid of moving graphics and IRS forms that frame his every move.
   Ferrell’s ruler-straight evenness, his emotional flatness is appropriate to the character, but it may disappoint those wondering, "Where are the big laughs? I was expecting more laughs." It’s just that the movie has different plans. This is a Romantic Comedy with a capital "R" and it depends on Harold having a breakthrough. But Kay is stuck in an endless chain-smoking dead-end, and her publisher sends over a plot-doctor assistant, Penny Escher (Queen Latifah). Even Penny gets stuck in Kay’s novelistic cul-de-sac.
   Harold seeks the help of a literary theorist, Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who must know how to identify the narrator, or at least help Harold determine where the plot is going. It depends on whether this is to be a comedy or a tragedy, Hilbert tells him. Why not steer it into a classic comedy: boy meets girl and they hate each other. In spite of his social ineptitude, Harold does meet girl, Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a leftist baker who Harold is auditing for failure to pay back taxes.
   In the course of wrestling with each other’s plots (and whose plot is it, anyway?), Harold, Ana and Kay, not to mention a young boy on a bicycle and a woman bus driver, find that their stories converge to shape life at a crucial moment, which was in the plot all along.
   With this film, Ferrell takes a step closer to softer, less hilarious fare than he’s used to, like other antic comedians who are taking a walk on the mild side, Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler, to name just a couple. But Ferrell makes it work, because he keeps the character always on the edge of breaking out, connecting. That makes a particular emotional explosion in the film all the more effective and even a jolt.
   It’s a pleasure to see Gyllenhaal in a romantic lead. She hasn’t been in many feature films lately. Her tour de force performance in Secretary opposite James Spader flew under the radar without a trace. But it’s the smaller roles that fill out the picture which make it most satisfying. Dustin Hoffman’s spacey professor is effortlessly hilarious, just by asking Harold a series of pointed questions, which escalate toward the bizarre. He does it without even a hint of mockery. Emma Thompson’s voice is on screen more than herself, as the omniscient narrator of Harold’s life. When she does appear, it’s the minutia that define her — like the way she butts out each half-smoked cigarette into a damp tissue. Her spare office is littered with tissue balls, from which butt ends poke skyward. She writes on an antique IBM Selectric (that’s an electric typewriter, for those who grew up post-computer).
   The film builds toward a sentimental resolution that most other Will Ferrell vehicles wouldn’t support. It’s an obvious lesson about life’s story and what you make of it, knowing there’s got to be a final chapter. It’s also about being open to experience and being connected, giving in to love, all the plot elements that point toward Happily Ever After.
Rated PG-13 for some disturbing images, sexuality, brief language and nudity.