Stranger Than Fiction
Marc Forster
Will Ferrell/Maggie Gyllenhaal/Dustin Hoffman/Emma Thompson/113 minutes
Maybe it’s not your fault that your life sucks – it’s just written that way.
When Harold Crick (Ferrell) starts hearing a voice (Thompson) narrating his life, he has to figure out who’s writing his story and then, more importantly,how to prevent himself from being killed off.
This was a premise with much potential, though it did remind one of the Charlie Kaufman-scripted Adaptation (2002), which gleefully blurred the lines between the written word and real life as a screen-writer struggled to adapt a book.
Here, director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball) aims for low-key and droll, but the movie ends up flat and lacking in energy.
Lines like “You don’t like cookies? What’s wrong with you? Everybody likes cookies” did not help.
Thank goodness for Tony Hale (Arrested Development) in the tiny role of Harold’s co-worker, who cannot stop being funny even if he wanted to.
The DVD comes with a number of featurettes, mostly gushy pieces about the actors, the director, the writer and even about Chicago, where the movie was set.
The extended mock TV interview with the author Karen Eiffel (Thompson) by a clueless book channel show host (Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth) fared better.
(ST)