| |
Stranger Than Fiction stars Will Ferrell in his most passionate and gripping dramatic performance since . . . Elf?
After a season of movie after movie with similar plots and story lines, it’s refreshing to see Stranger Than Fiction because it’s story is unique. Will Ferrell plays a stuck-in-a-rut, by-the-books IRS agent name Harold Cricks with a predictable, routine and boring life. That all starts to change one day when he hears a voice who is seemingly narrating his life. He finds this strange, but not that big of a deal until one day the voice reveals that his death is immanent. Now he’s worried. He seeks out the help of a literary genius (Duston Hoffman) to figure out what’s happening and falls into the arms of an unlikely love interest, Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who might just inspire him to change his fate. In the mean time, renown novelist Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) has writer’s block and can’t decide just how to best kill off the character of Harold Cricks in her story…yet.
While the concept is definitely intriguing and unique, Stranger Than Fiction’s story is sweet and endearing even without the kooky supernatural twist. Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal have terrific chemistry, and Dustin Hoffman’s character is interesting and entertaining. And, even though the movie is not a typical over-the-top, silly Will Ferrell comedy, it has a reasonable amount of clever humor. Unfortunately, though, the great premise that draws us to the movie doesn’t quite live up its potential. Stranger Than Fiction is everything you might expect, but probably not everything you had hoped.
|
