"Stranger Than Fiction" (2006) - Movie Review

Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) counts his brush strokes in his morning routines, ties single knot for saving 43 seconds of his daily time and catches the 8:17 bus and he is an IRS agent. Methodical in his blood, Crick suddenly hears voices narrated with better vocabulary as he says and initially believing he is crazy wounds up realizing it might be his life been written in some book. The narrator is Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) desperately trying to kill her lead character in her future book. This is “Stranger than Fiction”, funny, peppy and delightful comedy with nothing but pure treats and cherishing vignettes of honest story written by Zach Helm.

And if some one said Will Ferrell would possibly able to hold up his vagrant bright smile (for many annoying) to pull up Harold Crick, who has been living the same day of his life for twelve years, I would have been looking them with strange eyes. He never winks or brings any of those over the top cranky gestures but he does what Jim Carrey did in “The Truman Show”. Quite astonishingly similar in story lines are these movies too, a predetermined life lead by both the protagonists. But Harold Crick does not want to explore or runaway from this. He does each and every single designed element of routine subconsciously accurate enough. A robot might do something different out of malfunction but Crick follows rigorously his time saving and precise manner of existence without fail.

Marc Forster, the director has to own a wide array of film distribution to be taken under his wings. He did an emotional drama in “Monster’s Ball”, a caring tender story in “Finding Neverland” and out here a comedy of our existence and the humanity of it in lovable way. Harold comes to the aid of a literary professor, Dr. Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) who becomes interested by the phrase “Little did he know” which the voice narrated over to take it as a way of satiating his needs of words. The comedy does not lie in Harold but that surrounding him. As with any film which makes a character realize his death to live the life to full, Harold instinctively flirts with Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a baker who he audits for she only paid 78% of tax as she does not want to finance the 22% being spent over defense. How cute and adorable is Maggie Gyllenhaal that even in her stubborn nature of being a rebel, she makes us fall in love with her when she offers cookie and milk to Harold. She did a role of a gold digger in “Happy Endings” with a character change and out here she has the flavour of the same but a truly lovable soul and no wonder Harold begins to fall for her.

The film surmounts for an ending which we are curious for and may be ready to be cheated. With parallel scenes of Karen imagining the mishaps of a perfect death for Harold, at various times I felt something on the lines of story within the story popping it up with artificial sweetness to this interesting original material. The screenplay by Zach Helm keeps the story in mind and does not want to act clever or use props to resolve the plot. Marc Forster with the apt use of graphical pictorial representation in a rather different creative way is fresh. I laughed out crazily on the day when Harold is asked to do nothing in his apartment and the Television program mouthing its painful ways an animal goes to its death. It is plainly hilarious.

Though I have not seen any of Ferrell’s films all the way, his reputation is known for a physical and loud comedian. Many despise his nature of comedy but he has his fan base. Here especially the scenes wherein he would have needed to imagine or someone voicing the narration to emote what he is going through and the problem is that it concerns the character he plays who needs to react, subtle but immediate. And little do we know about Harold itself as we get insight to his mundane life through the narration. He makes the character as the average man whom like many of us does the same thing over and over again. Ferrell manufactures that trait with simplicity and all the time never let his reputation over come the character. And with supporting roles from Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Queen Latifah as Karen’s assistant, it is a calculated perfect casting.

It is a feel good movie as any one would guess with the colour tone, dialogues, the peppy soundtrack and the characters as such. It bodes the character of light heartedness but it has and reminds us the heavy sense of sweet simplicities we miss in our life. The film works because the protagonist attempts his best to solve the issue in a normal way which is also very mundane, true to his character. Nothing extraordinary is attempted but he simply follows the guidance of Professor Hilbert. Yet his mind unsheathes a part which he never dared to experiment even if it means flirting with a cute girl and which may be the most daring thing he ever has done at all.