A decent premise caves under scrutiny, exposing (Fiction) as one long setup that lacks a punch line.
Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:165
Fresh:119
Rotten:46
Average Rating:6.8/10
Consensus: A fun, whimsical tale about about an office drone trying to save his life from his narrator. The cast obviously is having a blast with the script, but Stranger Than Fiction's tidy lessons make this metaphysical movie feel like Charlie Kaufman-lite.
Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins
Genre: Comedies
US Box Office: $40,137,776
Synopsis: One morning, a seemingly average and generally solitary IRS agent named Harold Crick begins to hear a female voice narrating his every action, thought and feeling in alarmingly precise detail.... One morning, a seemingly average and generally solitary IRS agent named Harold Crick begins to hear a female voice narrating his every action, thought and feeling in alarmingly precise detail. Harold's carefully controlled life is turned upside down by this narration only he can hear, and when the voice declares that Harold Crick is facing imminent death, he realizes he must find out who is writing his story and persuade her to change the ending. The voice in Harold's head turns out to be the once celebrated, but now nearly forgotten, novelist Karen "Kay" Eiffel (Emma Thompson), who is struggling to find an ending for what might be her best book. Her only remaining challenge is to figure out a way to kill her main character, but little does she know that Harold Crick is alive and well and inexplicably aware of her words and her plans for him. To make matters worse, Kay's publisher has dispatched a hard-nosed "assistant," Penny Escher (Queen Latifah), to force Kay to finish her novel and finish off Harold Crick. Desperate to take control of his destiny and avoid an untimely demise, Harold seeks help from a literary theorist named Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who suggests that Harold might be able to change his fate by turning his story from a tragedy into a comedy. Professor Hilbert suggests that Harold try to follow one of comedy's most elemental formulas: a love story between two people who hate each other. His suggestion leads Harold to initiate an unlikely romance with a free-spirited baker named Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal). As Harold experiences true love and true life for the first time, he becomes convinced that he has escaped his fate, as his story seems to be taking on all the trappings of a comedy in which he will not, and cannot, die. But Harold is unaware that in a Karen Eiffel tragedy, the lead characters always die at exactly the moment when they have the most to live for. Harold and Kay find themselves in unexplored territory as each must weigh the value of a single human existence against what might just be an immortal work of art: a novel about life and death -- and taxes. --© Sony Pictures [More]
Starring: Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman
Starring: Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Tony Hale, Queen Latifah, Kristin Chenoweth
Director: Marc Forster
Director: Marc Forster
Producer: Lindsay Doran, Aubrey Henderson, Jim Miller, Brittany Daniel
Studio: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Reviews for Stranger Than Fiction
Sure, [Crick's] more a caricature than a fully fleshed out person, but he reacts to his increasingly unbelievable situation with unexpected...believability.
Not the most satisfying of films, and it may not be as profound as it wants to be, but there are moments here that make it well worth a look.
Stranger Than Fiction promises a heady experience, but it ultimately heads for the heart instead.
In a movie full of surprises, the biggest may be Ferrell's perfectly deadpan performance.
Indulge the movie's excesses, and it rewards the viewer's intelligence with humor mingled with insight, warmth and painless lessons in literary theory.
Screenwriter Zach Helm and director Marc Forster take a great, out-there idea and make it into something that feels true and magical.
For much of the film, Ferrell must suppress his showman instincts to pull off the schlub act. That's good for the film, but it's bad for fans who expect him to scream obscenities and run down the street naked.
Stranger Than Fiction is a meditation on life, art and romance, and on the kinds of responsibility we have. Such an uncommonly intelligent film does not often get made.
Never self-consciously wacky or cloyingly sentimental, Stranger Than Fiction is instead a breezy, sweet comedy.
Fiction is one large false start, unable to claw out of the pit of its own toxic self-awareness.
A surprising, pathos-generating performance by Ferrell ... For the first time in a long time I really hoped a movie's main character wouldn't die.
As a philosophical study, it's shaky beyond belief, but as a humorous trifle, it admirably makes up the difference.
The link between comedy and tragedy is closer than Ferrell believes but the line isn't as clever as it should be and not nearly as profound as it believes it is.
Will Ferrell is great with a restrained, earnest performance as a guy who isn't the life of the party, isn't bombastic and loud, but is just a shy guy trying to make it through life without getting hurt.
...the film also closes on a less than inspired note, but the filmmakers fail to take advantage of the literary irony.
the star, fittingly, for this meditation on the power of stories, is the script -- exceptionally clever, knowledgeable about literature and narrative structure, filled with sly humor but also as warmly delectable as one of Pascal's cookies.
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