There are a handful of really nice moments in Fiction, and almost none of them have to do with Helm's outrageous setup.
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
[Stranger than Fiction] teems with ideas both literary and existential, which might make it unbearably precious, were it not redeemed by woozy charm and some serious acting from Will Ferrell.
A fantasy, so it's not obligated to be logical, but it should at least have internal logic and follow its own set of rules. A failure to do so untethers the film.
Cute title, but a snappy opening dissolves into a relatively simplistic tale of a wet noodle learning to stand up for himself.
Despite its pretensions to be unusual, oddly imitative and ordinary...less like a story you find clever and surprising than like a book you've read before.
Will Ferrell in a reserved, highbrow comedy? Now that is Stranger Than Fiction.
Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson give brilliant performances in this metaphysical, Kafkaesque dilemma...far too deep to be viewed as a frivolous comedy.
...a clever ode to creative constipation on par with Charlie Kaufman's 'Adaptation' (to which it owes a great debt).
[The] performances succeed where Harold fails: gaining a life independent of their author.
The movie is clever, but a little too pleased with its own clockwork intricacy.
It takes a great premise and runs with it, neither wasting opportunities nor going off on tangents. It features strong work from both the main and supporting actors, and manages seamlessly to incorporate both humor and poignancy.
A fresh and original fantasy love story entertainment that will arouse all the literary DNA we possess.
Ferrell doesn't give his typical over-the-top performance here, but rather creates a terrific, understated character that produces a huge amount of empathy and likeability.
This is a Ferrell you've never seen before, nailing a role that calls for breakneck humor in the final race against the clock and touching gravity in the love scenes with Gyllenhaal.
The film struggles under its increasingly weighty pretensions to literary credibility and even tragic status, stumbling towards an unconvincing and cloying conclusion.
Brilliantly written, thoughtful and frequently hilarious comedy with impressive direction and terrific performances from the entire cast.
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