Stranger Than Fiction
There are times when you turn away from a movie lying on the shelf of your local rental store. Then one fine day, for no goddamn reason, you pick it up, watch it and at the end of the movie, walk in front of the mirror, look at yourself and ask “What the hell is wrong with you? This movie was awesome!”
For me Stranger Than Fiction (STF) falls in one of those ones. A movie that right from the first reel throws you off balance. It’s one of those “not the regular fare”.
Really, the credit first goes to Zach Helm, for coming up with such an idea and to director Marc Forster, for giving it just the right balance of visual sense.
When an IRS auditor, Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) finds a woman’s voice playing in his head, he’s intrigued. The voice actually is talking about him. As if it’s narrating his life. The past, the present and occasionally the future. Crick is astonished and seeks help during the process of which he lands at the door of a Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman). The professor deduces that a novelist is writing a story somewhere in this world and the content of the story is inadvertently driving Crick’s life.
Who is the writer?
Sure enough there’s Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson giving an air tight performance), who’s writing a novel about a character called, Harold Crick. Helping her is Penny Escher (Queen Latifah).
The problem though is Karen is known to kill her main character in her novels. Now Harold Crick has to run around to find who is writing a book on him and stop the author from writing a tragic end…
Will Ferrell as Harold Crick gives in an above board performance, though one wished there was more to Harold Crick than the occasional flat board. Yet Ferrell gives his best shot.
Good comedians in my opinions come out really good in the serious roles they do. Not sure what the reason is, but the same doesn’t work the other way round all the time. Ferrell though sometimes so underplays his role that at times he’s dangerously close to being wooden.
Maggie Gyllenhaal as Ferrell’s love interest is full of spunk and energy, while Dustin Hoffman just walks through his role with ease.
But the real impact is from Emma Thompson as the writer. The novel embeds so deep into her life that she’s borderline eccentric. The brilliance though in Thompson’s performance comes out when she is faced with extra ordinary situations through out the story and it’s a treat to see her use her body and eye to devastating effect. It’s real tragic to see we don’t have roles like these written in Bollywood. But then we don’t have many choices of actors to play such roles… do we?
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Oz= seems interesting film. Though dont know for
sure if Ferrel can be successful in a role with
complex shades. He looks better where he has no
sublayer to express like he did in Old School and
wedding crasher.
You are so right about ignoring few films just by seeing their cover and later they are turned out to be the ones which win our viewing.:)
Oz: I watched it when it was on in the theaters because it seemed to be like a standard Will Farell laugh fest! And after Ron Burgundy and Ricky Bobby!, I thought this will be a hat trick!
I mean the promos of him looking at the sky and screaming at the voice to stop, that seemed like classic Farrell.
But when I saw the movie, I came out blown away exactly because of what it was NOT – a standard Will Farrel comedy!
There seemed to some Oscar buzz, but I guess it fell through at some point.
I am a movie snob.
I turn up my nose at this type of film.
Or, I used to.
I have a friend who keeps bringing Will Farrell films to my home and makes me watch them.
And, I think he may be brilliant.
I actually wanted to see this one in theaters but missed it.
Really, I plan to watch Blades of Glory in the next couple of weeks.
I like to talk about the French comedies that have been gracing my DVD player for the last two months like a pretentious euro snob, but there is a place for simple, just plain funny comedies like this one…
And, Emma Thompson has long been one of my favourite actresses in the world.
Is there anything she can’t do?
Comedy, drama, period pieces, children’s films, and she is always consistently above average to great.
Not to mention her behind the camera work.
Now I know what is going to be placed on the netflix queue this week…
Saw this movie loved it, for all those who dont like will ferell and think that he just shouts a loud at everything they have to watch this one. and emma thompson was awesome overall great movie.
great fun this interface….maza aaya post padke bhi….Congrats Oz……actually the beers u promise…it should be the other way round….the cans on us when u are here…KUDDOS>>>BRAVO Oz
The new interface is fantastic. Much better than the earlier one.
I’ve watched it and its wonderful. Will Farrell suits the role, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson are great too.
This looks great!! Much better feeling now.
I am little bit confused also…things have shifted from left to right…
Great work team!!!
Both striker and me watched this movie in parts… need some quality time to sit and enjoy this.
Its awesome. Very Kauffman’ish…
Will Ferrel falls flat but the real winner is the writer… thanks oz for the movie… loved it throughly…
ravptor, finally finished watching this today! LOVED IT!! ferrell and thompson are simply too good.. especially the latter.