Harold Crick is a very regimented, very ordinary tax auditor whose life gets strange when he starts hearing an English woman narrating his every action. It turns out he’s the main character in a literary novel. Unfortunately, it’s a tragedy. He’s going to die.
Stranger than Fiction is a clever story wrapped up in a cozy, charming film, starring a sedate but heartfelt performance from Will Ferrell. Much like the way that Jim Carrey used his comedy chops to provide a lot of emotional nuance to a less-comic character, Ferrell makes us care so deeply about a very tedious man that I cry every time I reach the film’s climax. And I know how it ends!
I’m a writer myself, and you can tell where I am in the process on a book based on how similar I am to Karen Eiffel. If I’ve relapsed on any substance usage, standing on tables, and writing on typewriter instead of a sensible computer program, I am at the hard part. (Side note: I want an IBM typewriter with a type ball. Please let me know if you can hook me up.)
Somehow I am also all the other characters in this movie, too: the anarchist baker, the guy who counts tooth brush strokes, the English professor who thinks a meaningful death is important enough to literary history that it should be allowed to happen, the auditor who wants to go to space camp…
It’s a sweet movie that feels very grounded and colorful, a lot like good literature. It’s a nice romcom. It’s very funny sometimes, though not in the same way as many Will Ferrell movies. It somehow feels much older than nineteen-years-old (almost two decades now!), but also very current — which is, I guess, the very definition of timeless.
(image credit: Sony Pictures Releasing)
