MOVIE REVIEW: 'Stranger than Fiction'


Longer edit of a review in today's Oregonian:





IRS auditor Harold Crick ( Will Ferrell ) hears a voice in his head. A narrator’s voice.

“It’s telling me what I’ve already done -- accurately, and with a better vocabulary,” Harold explains to a bemused lit professor (Dustin Hoffman). The voice belongs to reclusive novelist Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), who lives across town; between her frequent cigarette breaks, she’s (unwittingly) writing the story of Harold Crick’s life.

Unfortunately for the auditor, Kay’s novel-in-progress is titled “Death and Taxes.” And as soon as she types up the last few pages, Harold Crick is going to die.

He takes little comfort in the fact that the death will probably be poetic.

With its fanciful conceit, arty touches, and existential forays, “Stranger than Fiction” plays like a mainstreamed riff on the whole Kaufman / Jonze / Gondry vibe. It’s a sort of crowd-pleasing art film. (That’s not necessarily an insult.)

I loved the little schematic diagrams that track Harold’s too-linear existence; it’s a witty use of special effects that echoes Edward Norton’s walk through the Ikea catalog in “Fight Club.” Zach Helm’s script is very funny and occasionally shocking, as when we find ourselves dropped into Kay’s death fantasies. My favorite line in the movie is Kay’s, when her assistant (Queen Latifah) suggests she try a nicotine patch: “I don’t need a nicotine patch. I smoke cigarettes.”

My second-favorite line comes in a terrific scene where Hoffman’s prof -- who advises Harold on his life as if they were in a Graduate Writing Program -- asks a deadpan series of questions designed to sort out what kind of story Harold’s in: “Are you the king of anything?... Are you relieved to find out you’re not a golem?”

Thompson gives a funny, weird, un-pretty performance as the near-autistic hermit novelist; it’s great to see her back onscreen in something that isn’t “Nanny McPhee.” But maybe the best thing about “Stranger than Fiction” is the way it extracts unexpected work from underrated actors. As a comic, Ferrell’s greatest strength is his ability to go dumb-animal blank. He puts it to great use here in a genuine dramatic turn, as the narration forces Harold to examine his dreamless life. “You don’t control your fate,” concludes Hoffman mid-film, and it’s incredibly freeing; what will Harold do to seize the day until the typewriter clacks?

At one point, as he tries to woo the sexy, tax-dodging baker he’s auditing (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Harold keeps a ledger to determine if his story is a comedy or a tragedy. You find yourself rooting for comedy, and you actually ache a little when Ferrell says through tears (!), “I can’t die right now. It’s just really bad timing.”

If “Stranger” drops the ball at all, it drops it three specific ways. The application of the narrator conceit is uneven; Thompson’s voice disappears for long stretches so the romance can develop in peace. Gyllenhaal’s turn from hate to love is sort of lamely abrupt (though it hardly derails her charm). And the final act -- which brings the storytelling-commenting-on-itself literary conceit back to the fore -- doesn’t feel as satisfying or dramatically nutritious as the rest of the film.

I will say this, though: Your reaction to the ending probably says as much about your personal movie tastes as it does about the ending itself. The script kind of points a mirror at you and asks what you want from art. (This may be accidental.)

Hearing himself think (The Oregonian, Nov. 10, 2006)

EARLIER: The CulturePulp Q&A: Will Ferrell (In Focus magazine, July 2004)

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Posted: Fri - November 10, 2006 at 04:47 PM        

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