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I just got and watched Stranger than Fiction, you know - that movie with Will Ferrell and the woman who’s doing the voiceover of his life, and then she says that it would lead to his “imminent death.” I had seen the trailer, then BAM, the movie was gone, I didn’t even know that it was released. What would we do without DVDs?

Stranger than Fiction stars Will Ferrell as Harold Crick, a boring and unknowingly depressed IRS agent who counts his steps while he walks to work. Then he starts hearing a voice narrating his life. And it says that he will die. Oh, and then he meets this woman who is the exact opposite of him. And they fall in love, and Harold starts to “live his life.” It turns out, there’s a real writer out there who IS writing his story, and is trying to decide how to kill her character.

The movie is really a great setup, the narrating voice and Will Ferrell’s reactions are hilarious, but it also goes beyond that. By the end of the movie, it’s not just a dumb Will Ferrell movie, but instead an interesting and unique one.

While the movie starts out with Harold’s life being narrated, it soon introduces new characters like Maggie Gyllenhaal’s who ends up becoming Harold’s love interest. Then there’s Queen Latifah, who has a small but very good supporting role, Emma Thompson as the writer, and finally Dustin Hoffman - the literary professor who plays a game of 20 questions to try to figure out what book Harold is in. The casting for the movie was nice because it brought in a wide range of actors, and they all fit well into their parts.

The trailer gives away all the best jokes in the movie, but the movie manages to stay fresh and funny for all 2 hours. This is really a quirky comedy, it’s unusual - it also has serious stuff in it.

At the end it starts to feel a little tiring. The motives and things that characters are depending on in the end are a little dumb, but it plays out much better than it could have. The premise is sort of like Adam Sandler’s Click, it makes for a great trailer which uses all the good jokes, and by the end it becomes fairly serious and sad. But Stranger than Fiction is less mainstream, and is really a unique and quirky movie, unlike Click which although enjoyable was pretty predictable.

I really enjoyed this movie because it manged to take a funny trailer and make it into a funny, but not dumb, Will Ferrell movie.

4.5/5

IMDB Entry | Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes | Trailer (Quicktime)