"Stranger Than Fiction" works, even when it is obvious to us that it should not. Here is a movie centered around a premise that could be grating and precious, yet somehow, the movie is neither of these things. Instead, the movie is playful, tender and true — a cathartic, beautifully observed little gem with a humanistic streak that is both admirable and impossible to resist. By the time the end credits started to roll, I was hugging myself with joy.
The basic conceit of the movie is almost jarringly high-concept. Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is a quiet IRS agent whose life is determined by routine. He spends his time counting steps to and from the bus stop and when he gets home, he proceeds to count his brush strokes as he brushes he teeth every night. He has no family, no girlfriend and only one friend, a fellow IRS agent named Dave (Tony Hale, aka Buster from "Arrested Development") who confesses to Harold his dream of one day attending Space Camp, despite being in his mid-30s.
Harold's quiet, well-ordered world is turned upside down one morning when he begins to hear a disembodied voice narrating the mundane events of his life. After a few days of gamely putting up with the narration about his life's story, Harold goes to see a psychiatrist, who provides him with few solutions (Harold feels it is important to tell her, "It's not schizophrenia, it's just a voice in my head").
In an attempt to crack the code of what the narrator has in mind for him, Harold seeks out the advice of Dr. Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who works as a professor of literary theory, and, as he happily volunteers, "lifeguard at the faculty swimming pool." Together, they try to figure out exactly what kind of a story Harold Crick is living in: a comedy or a drama or, possibly, a fantasy, as Jules is very concerned about the possibility of Harold having to defeat trolls who live underneath his floorboards.
The story of Harold's life is actually being written by Katherine Eiffel (Emma Thompson) a reclusive novelist trying to finish her latest novel in her cold, Spartan apartment. Her efforts are being further complicated by the fact that Harold and his newfound sense of self seem to be rebelling against her narration, going so far as to take up guitar and beginning to court Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a lovely young baker he is supposed to be auditing. As she rushes to meet her deadline, Kay is forced to try and come up with a new way to kill Harold Crick and get her novel back under control.
This premise — so chock full of aggressive meta-trippiness — seems almost impossible to pull off, especially considering the current backlash against Charlie Kaufman-style mind-benders. Director Marc Forster ("Finding Neverland") and first-time scribe Zach Helm make a wise choice in not getting caught up in the constructs of the plot (we never find out, for example, whether or not Harold is a real person or a fictional construct), choosing instead to focus on Harold's self-discovery. The pair puts together a few cheeky set pieces — the movie probably didn't need all the scenes where Harold's watch goes haywire in an attempt to talk to him, or the sight of Harold's apartment being destroyed by a wayward wrecking ball. But the film soars during the quiet scenes between Harold and Ana, like when he uses his newly-purchased guitar to serenade her with a Monkees song during their first date.
The cast is uniformly brilliant. Ferrell is the center of the movie, and he's restrained and charming. Gyllenhaal is luminous as the woman of Harold's dreams. Hoffman and Thompson have the showier roles, and both of them manage to ingeniously tap into the battiness that comes with surrounding oneself with fictional characters for an extended period of time.
There will be questions about whether the final payoff for the movie is really worth the journey. Without giving too much away, I think the final revelation works. It was Phillip Roth who opined not all that long ago that "getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living … and then, on careful consideration, getting them wrong again." What makes "Stranger Than Fiction" so special is that, in the end, Harold manages to get everything right, even as things go wrong. Life goes on, we all fall down and maybe, just maybe, love will out.
Grade: 4.5 out of 5
