Stranger than Fiction

Directed by Marc Forster, Stranger than Fiction follows IRS agent Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) as his orderly life is thrown for a loop after he discovers that he’s the creation of a morose author named Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). It’s a high-concept premise that’s employed to completely captivating and progressively enthralling effect by Forster, as the filmmaker, working from Zach Helm’s screenplay, delivers a briskly-paced endeavor that effectively straddles the line between laugh-out-loud funny comedy and increasingly heartrending character study – with the picture’s success ultimately due in no small part to Ferrell’s tremendously compelling turn as the seriously sympathetic central character. (It’s clear, as well, that Ferrell’s top-notch efforts here are matched by a fantastic supporting cast that includes Dustin Hoffman and Maggie Gyllenhaal.) There’s little doubt, also, that Stranger than Fiction‘s spellbinding atmosphere is perpetuated and heightened by its growing emphasis on the budding relationship between Crick and Gyllenhaal’s Ana, with the actors’ palpable chemistry together ensuring that the picture does, on top of everything else, work smashingly as a top-tier and thoroughly memorable romance. (It’s impossible, for example, to downplay the effectiveness and impact of the sequence in which Crick plays Wreckless Eric’s “Whole Wide World” for Ana.) By the time the mesmerizing and deeply satisfying closing stretch rolls around, Stranger than Fiction has cemented its place as a near-perfect, impressively ambitious piece of work that boasts (and benefits from) Ferrell’s most accomplished performance.

**** out of ****