Bristol, Connecticut, UNITED STATES — When I heard that Will Ferrell was going to be in Stranger than Fiction, I knew I had to go see the movie in theaters as soon as it came out.
After watching him in other movies, namely “Elf,” I was expecting his newest movie to be another great comedy.
Stranger than Fiction, directed by Marc Forster, literally tells the story of a man named Harold Crick, played by Ferrell. That is to say that Harold, a lonely IRS tax agent whose life revolves around numbers, suddenly wakes up one morning to hear a woman’s voice.
She is able to narrate his life, and accurately vocalizes whatever Harold does and thinks.
After seeking the help of literary professor Dr. Jules Hilbert, played by Dustin Hoffman, Harold realizes that he must be the main character in an unfinished book. He finds out that the book’s author, Karen Eiffel, played by Emma Thompson, always kills her characters at the end of her stories.
After reading the book’s manuscript, Harold realizes that he is able to stop his death. This is an especially compelling choice, considering the fact that Harold just met the woman that he “wants,” as he puts it, a rebel baker played by Maggie Gyllenhaal.
But is he willing to sabotage the author’s latest masterpiece?
Overall, the movie was a good one. The actors effectively portrayed the characters – Ferrell was a very convincing lonely tax agent, and Thompson played a genuinely depressed but determined author with writer’s block.
And the plot, which was amusing at times and even profound at the end, was also a good one.
The only poor aspect of the movie was that it just wasn’t as funny as I expected it to be. It had humorous parts, especially just after Ferrell hears the narrator’s voice during the first day, but there weren’t many moments that made me want to laugh out loud.
Overall, Stranger than Fiction was better, and surprisingly a lot less strange, than most movies in theaters lately.
Rachel Glogowski is a Reporter for Youth Journalism International.
