When Stranger Than Fiction grows up, it really, really wants to be Charlie Kaufman film. As things stand, it’s a counterfeit lacking the Byzantine trickery of the real deal. But faux-Kaufman is still better than none at all. By now, we’re well used to seeing comic actors coming over all serious for The Right Role, and following Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love, Jim Carey in Man In The Moon and Robin Williams in everything, Stranger Than Fiction recruits funnyman Will Ferrell as its put-upon hero.
As anal IRS agent Harold Crick, Ferrell religiously counts the strokes of the toothbrush and steps to the bus stop each and every day. In common with many onscreen omega males, he meets the free-spirited Maggie Gyllenhaal and an unlikely romantic crush blossoms. Unfortunately, his death is imminent. We know this because Emma Thompson’s omnipotent narrator tells us so. And thanks to some metafictional chicanery, Harold can hear her too and immediately starts to panic. He seeks advice from literary theorist Dustin Hoffman who attempts to trace Harold’s progenitor and avert catastrophe.
Like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Stranger Than Fiction deftly treads the border between tragedy and comedy and features warm central performances. (Mr. Ferrell’s ridiculously sweet rendition of Wreckless Eric’s ‘Whole Wide World’ would alone justify the admission price. But where Gondry’s film was schizoid and interesting, Forster’s is frequently too safe and clean, incorporating sleek, heavily bankrolled production values and a snug denouement. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind all’s well that end’s well, but couldn’t we zig-zag a little more on the way?