What I Rented - Stranger Than Fiction

Some mild plot points about the ending are in the following review.

Stranger Than Fiction could have gone the easy route, making quick, cheap jokes at the expense of its characters, but it instead chooses the more difficult, and interesting path, taking its premise seriously and allowing the characters to react to the extraordinary events. When a voice starts narrating IRS agent Harold Crick’s (Will Ferrell) life, insinuating that he will die imminently, Crick begins to re-evaluate his life. At the same time, Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson), while writing a novel about Crick (not knowing that he is a real person), tries to figure out how to conquer her writer’s block and kill off her protagonist.

While the film initially relies a bit too much on gimmicks (the Sims style pop-ups are more distracting than anything else), Stranger Than Fiction quickly finds its groove when Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a tax dodging baker, enters the movie and Crick, confused about his narrative situation, seeks advice from literary professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman). Since his life is being narrated, Hilbert and Crick try to discover what kind of story is being told, a comedy or a tragedy. Some of the films most charming moments occur when Crick realizes Pascal is the pendulum in his life that can swing him towards a happy ending or a tragic one (an idea hilariously visualized when Crick has a conversation with her while sitting in the middle of an accordion bus).

The love story with Pascal is charming, a definite throwback to old-style romantic comedies, complete with grand romantic gestures (he gives her flours), and heartfelt speeches (is there anything greater in a movie than watching a timid character finally tell someone how they truly feel?). It’s material that could easily be corny, but Gyllenhaal and Ferrell find the right chemistry, adding sparks to the potentially clichéd relationship.

In fact, the movie keeps finding ways to circumvent clichés. Harold realizing that he hasn’t actually been living his life and has just been going through the motions is a story point used in many, many previous films. Here, the plot point becomes more complicated when Karen Eiffel realizes that she has the power to keep Harold alive or kill him, which becomes further complicated by the fact that the ending in which he dies could result in one of the best, most influential books of the twenty-first century. Does Harold fight for life, or sacrifice himself in order to ensure the survival of an important work of fiction? It’s all darkly funny, but oddly touching, and the film finds the right ending to wrap everything up.

My only true concern has to do with a tiny, but frustrating plot point. Harold’s death, as conceived by Karen Eiffel, revolves around two other people, a small boy and a bus driver. They are shown at various times in the film only for a few brief seconds, but it’s implied in the narrative that their stories are just as important as Crick’s, that somehow his death ties up three narratives. Unfortunately, the audience never knows anything about them, so it’s hard to get a true sense of why Harold’s death is so important or why Eiffel’s book has the potential to be so earth shattering. It’s a minor quibble, but I felt like I needed to know a bit more about these characters in order to understand the full gravitas of Harold’s final decision.

As it stands, Stranger Than Fiction is a charming, funny, moving movie with great performances, and a script that wonderfully dissects the intricate balance between reality and those moments in life that seem more rooted in fiction.

Star Rating ***1/2 out of 4