Stranger Than Fiction

When I reviewed A Thousand Words last month, kelvin remarked it sounded like a movie that Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler would have made in 2002, or Matthew Perry in 2006. Along those lines, here's a movie by Will Ferrell from 2006.

He plays an IRS agent who begins hearing a British lady's voice in his head. She narrates how dull and repetitive his life is, and eventually that he's going to die soon. He understandably freaks out about this, and ends up consulting with a literature professor (Dustin Hoffman), who concludes he is caught in a story. But is it a tragedy or a comedy? Either way, he starts trying to improve his life by learning the guitar and dating a bake shop owner (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, in a role that largely wastes her).

Meanwhile, Emma Thompson is the author in question, who is trying to come up with a proper way to kill off Will Ferrell to end her first book in several years. Queen Latifah is in here as an assistant sent by the publisher to help Emma Thompson finish the book on schedule. This is complicated somewhat once they find out the person who is going to die is a real person.

So it's that kind of movie. I don't really understand the part where Will Ferrell's wristwatch seems to have developed sentience and is trying to take an active role in his life. Also, Emma Thompson gives him the outline of the death she ultimately decides on, and he gives it to Dustin Hoffman to read. Hoffman tells him he has to go through with this, because it's the greatest work of literary fiction in decades, and his death is the culmination. 

My first thought is, "like hell I'm dying for art, especially someone else's art." My second thought is, "there is no way this story, based on what we've seen of it in this movie, is that good." It's simply not that great a story. Guy with boring life tries to step out of his routine, then dies as he's achieving real happiness? That sounds like what some first semester English grad writes under the logic that sad endings are more realistic, and therefore better.