Imagine you are, by a most bizarre twist of events, aware that you’re caught in the web of “little did he/she know.” You are the principal figure in a narrator’s “third person omniscient” telling of a life story. That story is yours. And you will soon die.
You are, more over, a person who, up to this moment, have meticulously managed every piece of your life down to the most intricate detail.
How will you respond? Will you tighten your hold on the controls? Will you let go and have that fling you’ve saved life for? Will you, finally, look outside yourself for help? Will you cower in the gloom of despair? Will you pursue some noble cause with your final breaths?
These are questions posed in Lindsay Doran’s “Stranger Than Fiction.” Will Ferrell (Harold Crick) whom I never imagined to have a serious cell in him (Roadside promotions of his most recent “Blades of Glory” do nothing to dispel that presumption.) plays the leading role surprisingly well, making his character’s carefully nuanced, yet ultimately admirable life quite believable. The rest of the primary cast – Dustin Hoffman (Professor Jules Hilbert); Emma Thompson (the eccentric Author and The Voice); Queen Latifah (the Publisher’s Assistant); Maggie Gyllenhaal (Ana!) and His Wristwatch (His Wristwatch) – superbly support him, making the story compelling; even inspiring. Inspiring in that it moves us to remember and live as though, “the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, that we assume only accessorize our days, are in fact here for a much larger and nobler purpose ...”
Despite an annoyingly predictable acquiescence to the idea of a need for explicit treatment of romantic encounters, this movie, directed by Marc Forster, is worth seeing. Jim Denison April 2, 2007
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