Stranger Than Fiction
by Marc Forster
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Queen Latifah, Will FerrellDirector: Marc Forster
Brand: SONY PICTURES HOME ENT
Producer: Aubrey Henderson
Producer: Eric Kopeloff
Producer: Jim Miller
Producer: Joseph Drake
Producer: Lindsay Doran
Producer: Nathan Kahane
Writer: Zach Helm
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 113 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-02-27
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of Stranger Than Fiction
Movie Review: Restrained acting makes this effective
Summary: 4 Stars
Harold, played with great restraint by Will Ferrell, is one of those obsessive-compulsive types who live lonely boring lives of desperation. He brushes his teeth using the exact same number of strokes each day, knots his tie the same way and catches the same bus on the way to his boring job at the IRS.
One day, Harold hears a voice in his head -- a woman's voice with an English accent, Emma Thompson's voice in fact -- narrating his life as it happens. "Little did he know," the voice intones, "that Harold's actions have put him on a course to his own death."
The acting in this movie is uniformly good with Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah and Maggie Gyllenhaal all contributing. Ferrell is better here than I've ever seen him; he makes us see the true goodness of his character buried deeply beneath the facade and his yearning to live. The premise is interesting and the movie asks some important questions: what is more important, life or literature? How do you live a life to make it worth living? We learn that Thompson is a famous author wrestling with writer's block and a life almost as empty as Harold's. But this movie never gets freighted down with philosophy as it barrels along to its satisfying conclusion.
Well worth an evening in front of the boob tube....
Summary of Stranger Than Fiction
AN IRS AUDITOR SUDDENLY FINDS HIMSELF THE SUBJECT OF NARRATIONONLY HE CAN HEAR: NARRATION THAT BEGINS TO AFFECT HIS ENTIRELIFE, FROM HIS WORK, TO HIS LOVE-INTEREST, TO HIS DEATH.Much was written about Will Ferrell's first "dramatic role" as Harold Crick, an IRS auditor who begins hearing a voice narrating his life. But Stranger Than Fiction is hardly a drama. However, what Ferrell does--like Jim Carrey before him in The Truman Show--is handle a toned-down character with genuineness and affection: you believe he is this guy. Crick leads a lonely life filled with numbers and routines. While at first he considers the voice a nuisance, Crick decides more action is needed when it speaks of "his demise." Enter Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who takes on the absurd notion with revelry, trying to find out what kind of book Crick's life is leading. It turns out that the voice Crick is hearing belongs to Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), a very real--and troubled--author who is writing a book in which Crick is a fictional character. As usual with these things, the stuffed shirt learns to live a better life--Crick even falls for one of his audits, a brash baker named Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Marc Foster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland) has the right tone for the film, using great urban scenes (the unnamed city is Chicago) with interesting visualizations of Crick's world of numbers. He also directs Ferrell, Hoffman, and Gyllenhaal to their most charming performances (plus Linda Hunt and Tom Hulce pop up in two funny scenes). Ferrell succeeds in being a romantic lead you can root for; a scene where he eats Ana's freshly baked cookies is totally delightful without a hint of sarcasm. Screenwriter Zach Helm has two personal traits with his story: like Crick he followed his heart (he stopped rewriting scripts and only worked on his own) and like Eiffel, the final results are not a masterpiece, but good, and entertaining enough. Britt Daniel of the band Spoon worked on the dynamite soundtrack.--Doug Thomas
Extras from Stranger Than Fiction
 "Counting Brush Strokes," A featurette on the filming of Stranger Than Fictionhigh bandwidth |  Tax Man!: A clip from the film high bandwidth |  Queen Latifah on working with Emma Thompson high bandwidth |
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Beyond Stranger Than Fiction on Amazon.com
 Comic Actors Go Dramatic |  CD Soundtrack |  Emma Thompson Essentials |
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