Stranger Than Fiction: Will Ferrell Can Play Serious?

A friend of mine organizes regular trips to the movies every Friday night. We tend to see new releases of action-adventure and horror flicks, but this time we went with a black comedy that not too many of us had heard of.

Stranger than Fiction starring Will Ferrell. A movie about a literary character trying to fight back against the things his author does to him. It sounds hilarious until you realize that she's trying to kill him and not in a comedic bumbling way a la Clue. What begins as a slightly goofy comedy becomes a very dark one as a man tries to fight his fate and the ending that has been chosen for him.

There are two storylines that interweave with a third thread. The first, obviously, is the dull daily routine of Harold Krick, played by Ferrell. Harold is an IRS auditor who lives (and dies) by his wristwatch. Everything begins to go wrong when his wristwatch dies and he must reset it. - No, I take that back. Everything begins to go wrong when he realizes a British woman that only he can hear is narrating his life - and impending death. For little did he know…

The British narrator is Kay Eiffel, played by Emma Thompson. She, assisted by Queen Latifa's Penny Escher, is trying to perfect the end of her novel where Krick dies a most tragic yet uplifting death. She spends most of the film chain-smoking and daydreaming about different means of death - all of which wind around the final thread of a little boy getting a new bike and a woman going for a new job.

Hearing his life told in 3rd person narrative style, Krick seeks help from first a psychiatrist and then a literature professor (Dustin Hoffman). He's told to see if his life is a black comedy or a romantic tragedy - if it's a comedy he'll live and if not - then the death that the female voice predicted will come to pass.

Complicating Harold's quest to find out if his life is really coming to an end is the lovely Anna Pascal, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. A baker he's sent to audit, Krick finds the voice of the narrator urging him on to improper thoughts about the anti-establishmentarian Pascal.

Trying to fight fate, the narrator, and his own personal fears, Krick rises to the occasion to try to make his life his own. He does that which he always wanted to do. He courts the baker. He starts to get out of his dull beige apartment and live - knowing he's doomed to die.

But having finally found out what life truly can be like, Harold doesn't want to die. He makes a final attempt to change his fate in a story twist like something out of Stephen King's works.

Through it all, Will Ferrell performs with an amazing level of pathos and sincerity. You like Harold. You don't want to see him die. You want him to win Ana's heart. You want him to escape the fate the morose Kay has planned for him. Sadly, the most poignant moments of this film and utterly brilliant performance of Ferrell would spoil it for those who have not yet seen it so I cannot disclose them.

Those who saw the Truman Show and were stunned by Jim Carey's ability to pull off serious acting will be even more blown away by Ferrell. While the movie has similar points (a man's life is laid out for him by someone else and he rebels against his fate), Stranger than Fiction doesn't go for the obvious laugh. Most of it is very subtle, with nothing too over the top.

No matter what you take from the film, whether it's the stirring story of man vs fate, the performance of Ferrell, or Dustin Hoffman's comedic timing - you will want a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Sound confusing? You'll understand when you see them.