Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Synopsis: Paging Harold Crick. Paging Harold Crick. Your life is calling.
Harold is an IRS agent who lives in a beige world full of numbers and calculations and minutes and seconds and filing and organization. Until he wakes up one morning to the sound of his life being narrarated. And doesn't sound good. He's a character in a novel and he's going to die, but how and when? He is then in a race to find the author of the book, and in the meantime he finds a different kind of life that suddenly seems a lot more worth saving than the safe, almond colored world he was living in.
Crick is played by Will Ferrell. Normally I am not a Ferrell fan, but in this film he's less typically "Ferrell-ish" than ever, and it works. Emma Thompson plays Kay Eiffel, the narrarator/author, and she's just bizarre and funny and tragic and human. Dustin Hoffman is great as the literary theorist who wants to help Crick find out if he's living in a comedy or a tragedy. And Maggie Gyllenhaal rounds out the story as a lovely, socialist baker who Harold is auditing.
I have to say, I LOVED this film. It was thought provoking, intelligent, funny, and...well, sweet. But it never crosses the line into sappy or slapstick, which I appreciated. This is a movie with an adult theme, so I doubt kids would really be interested, but it's rated PG-13, for "some disturbing images, sexuality, brief language and nudity," just so you know.
This movie really touched me. The question it poses is a good one to ponder: is the life you cling to the one you really want to save? I highly recommend "Stranger than Fiction."
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