Stranger Than Fiction B + Grade:
B+
   

Cast:
Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Queen Latifah, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman

Director:
Marc Forster

Rating: PG-13
for disturbing images, sexuality, language, nudity

Running time:
113 minutes
   Straddling the line between high art and popcorn flick, Marc Forster's Stranger Than Fiction -- another one of the big draws at this year's Toronto International Film Festival -- will undoubtedly be received in some quarters as a knockoff of Charlie Kaufman's more intellectual (and less humane) work, but that shouldn't diminish the pleasures it makes available to those of us who don't worry about such things.
   If screenwriter Zach Helm says the script was being developed before Adaptation came out, that's good enough for me.
   But the very real delights of the film -- the sublime faces of Emma Thompson and Maggie Gyllenhaal, a delightfully rumpled performance by Dustin Hoffman -- are tempered by a note of disappointment that the much heralded, much passed around script isn't all it's hyped up to be. It's a nice story, with a whimsical metafictional touch, but it's a long way from mind-blowing. If you are one of those unlucky souls who can't be satisfied by a movie that doesn't adhere to its own rules of logic, you're likely to bore your moviegoing companions silly explaining why it doesn't make any sense.
   Still, what do you expect from a movie built around the far-fetched conceit that a living, breathing, anal-retentive IRS agent named Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) wakes up one morning and hears a woman's voice narrating his life, "accurately" with "better vocabulary" than he possesses. Oh, and a British accent.
   If this isn't distressing enough, Crick hears the voice announce that he's about to die. Now given that the voice has been pretty precise so far, this revelation rachets up his anxiety to the point where he feels compelled to track down this writer and dissuade her from writing his end. He enlists Professor Jules Hilbert (Hoffman) to help track down the mysterious literary voice.
   As it turns out, the writer is seriously blocked Kay Eiffel (Thompson), whose working pace has slowed to the point that her publisher has assigned her a helpmate in circumspect Penny Escher (Queen Latifah) to make sure she finishes the novel in which Crick is the protagonist. Meanwhile, in his real life, Crick is assigned to audit lovely tax rebel baker Ana Pascal (Gyllenhaal ), who initially responds to Crick like he's, well, an IRS agent come to audit her.
   This allows for some sweet and engaging moments -- but one can feel a little tentativeness around the edges. Ferrell is very restrained, almost to the extent that he seems to be making a point about his potential as a dramatic actor. He has a very fine, even brave, scene where he strums a guitar and we can almost see what Ana is beginning to see in Crick. While I still don't get Ferrell -- I don't understand what people find compelling in his usual onscreen persona -- he's more than serviceable here in an understated role. (Maybe I still hold A Night at the Roxbury against him.)
   One of the best things about Stranger Than Fiction is a visual effect we see early on when the camera takes on Crick's perspective. As the number-obsessed Crick looks at any banal scene, white lines whip out to measure and count, Rainman-style, the items in his view. As Crick progresses, becomes more fully human (as you know he must), we see this startling effect less often, indicating he's become less of a counting machine. It's reminiscent of some of the early scenes in Fight Club, and it's a splendid little device.
   Another of the film's interesting fillips is the characters' names -- and even the names of various streets and buildings. They're all borrowed from notable (I almost said "famous" ) mathematicians. It's little gestures like this that make us wish Stranger Than Fiction were just a little tighter, a little deeper and a little less sure of its own cleverness. It's good all right, smarter and, despite the outlandish premise, truer than most romantic comedies. But it still feels more like a near miss -- a ground rule double -- than a home run.

This story was published Friday, November 10, 2006