Stranger Than Fiction

Stranger Than Fiction (2006) begins with a tax inspector hearing a woman's voice in his head, narrating his life. Harold Crick lives by counting: his steps, how long he brushes his teeth, when the bus arrives. One morning he starts hearing a narrator. The voice describes exactly what he does and does not know he can hear it. Then it says that this small act would lead to his imminent death. He goes to a professor of literature, whose first question is whether his story is a comedy or a tragedy. To find out, Harold starts examining his own life as fiction. At the same time a writer named Karen Eiffel is blocked and cannot work out how to kill her protagonist. The writer is real and so is Harold. The question is what a writer does on learning that the person she is writing is genuinely alive. Will Ferrell plays outside his comic register and the character barely raises his voice. Emma Thompson is the writer, Dustin Hoffman the professor, Maggie Gyllenhaal the baker. Marc Forster directed. Graphics put the numbers in Harold's head on screen and they thin out as it goes; as he stops counting, the screen empties. A scene with biscuits and a scene with a guitar are the best moments. It runs 113 minutes. Good for: metafiction, lightly philosophical comedy, and character films. Less good for: the pace is slow and the decision in the final section reads as an evasion to some viewers.