Progressive Wednesday

The TGIF Movie Review: Stranger Than Fiction

Will Ferrell stars in Stranger Than Fiction, and before any of your assumptions about him kick in, this isn’t your typical (and utterly gut-busting) Anchorman, Old School, or Wedding Crashers kind of Will Ferrell turn. This is more like the Ferrell in Elf, only more delicate, more controlled, and even more sincere.

And this isn’t the like the serious dramatic roles taken by the likes of Robin Williams and Jim Carey. That pair of actors can sometimes pick flicks that are so filled with syrupy-sap they make you look for a stack of flapjacks. (I might be exaggerating there, but I just wanted to write that sentence so badly.) So far, it appears as though Ferrell has chosen wisely, my Friday-loving friends.

Stranger Than Fiction is the story of Harold Crick (Ferrell), an IRS auditor who lives a life filled with banal routine, solitude, and safety. His life changes rather suddenly when he starts hearing a woman with a British accent (Emma Thompson as author Karen Eiffel), narrating his life as it happens. At first, Crick is slightly confused. Then he’s exasperated. Then he’s fearful.

He seeks out a psychiatrist and tells her that he can’t be schizophrenic because the narrator “[is] telling me what I’ve already done, accurately and with a better vocabulary.” Then he seeks out a literary theorist, Professor Jules Hilbert, played by Dustin Hoffman. Hilbert has better advice, suggesting that Crick take notes about what’s happening to better understand if the story he appears to be in — in other words, his life — is a tragedy or a comedy. At the same time, Crick starts auditing a baker played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, and soon feels himself, for the first time, falling for someone — hard. But the narrator has “let him know” that his death is drastically, unavoidably immanent, and Crick is understandably equal parts terrified and enraged.

I’d rather not give away any more of the plot, because unlike a 14th seed in the NCAA Basketball Tournament, I don’t want to be a spoiler. Let’s just say, as bizarre as the movie is as I’ve already described it, it gets more bizarre. But here’s the thing: you believe in it. Much like other recent movies set in a world of the unthinkable — Magnolia, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I [Heart] Huckabees — the movie doesn’t try to make excuses for it’s oddities. It successfully plays them off like they are just as believable as breathing.

Besides an engaging story and top-notch acting (and a soundtrack that reminded me of my iTunes catalogue), the movie’s filled with funny one- and two-liners:

“I don’t need a nicotine patch, Penny. I smoke cigarettes.”

* * *

“Mr. Crick, you’re staring at my [breasts].”

“If I was, I can assure you it was as a representative of the United States government.”

* * *

“And I suppose you smoked all these cigarettes.”

“No. They came pre-smoked.”

* * *

But this isn’t just a funny movie. It’s a flick about rule-makers vs. rule-breakers, about fate vs. free will, about waiting vs. actively living. The film teaches us one important lesson above all others: we couldn’t have thought up the lives we have, because our lives are too weird to believe.

- – - – -