Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

34 10,000 B.C.
55 Baby Mama
62 Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The
36 College Road Trip
xx Dark Knight, The
31 Deception
41 Drillbit Taylor
57 Forbidden Kingdom, The
67 Forgetting Sarah Marshall
54 Get Smart
49 Hancock
34 Happening, The
57 Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
xx Hellboy II: The Golden Army
71 Horton Hears a Who!
61 Incredible Hulk, The
65 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
79 Iron Man
35 Jumper
73 Kung Fu Panda
24 Love Guru, The
37 Made of Honor
xx Mamma Mia!
58 Mist, The
48 National Treasure: Book of Secrets
55 Nim's Island
22 Postal
69 Redbelt
44 Ruins, The
53 Sex and the City: The Movie
76 Shine a Light
37 Shutter
37 Speed Racer
61 Stop Loss
47 Strangers, The
55 Street Kings
33 Superhero Movie
93 WALL-E
64 Wanted
36 What Happens in Vegas...
54 You Don't Mess with the Zohan

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

83 Alexandra
80 Band's Visit, The
76 Beauty in Trouble
47 Bella
80 Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
59 Blind Mountain
55 Bra Boys
60 Brick Lane
70 Caramel
49 Children of Huang Shi, The
83 Chop Shop
83 Chris & Don. A Love Story
78 Counterfeiters, The
52 Diminished Capacity
64 Dreams with Sharp Teeth
73 Duchess of Langeais, The
84 Edge of Heaven, The
52 Elsa & Fred
79 Encounters at the End of the World
62 Expired
64 Fall, The
51 Finding Amanda
57 Flawless
86 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
63 Foot Fist Way, The
60 Fugitive Pieces
45 Full Grown Men
55 Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
69 Go-Getter, The
74 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
63 Gunnin for that #1 Spot
68 Heartbeat Detector
34 Holding Trevor
68 Honeydripper
55 Irina Palm
69 Jellyfish
60 Jihad for Love, A
68 Kabluey
62 Kiss the Bride
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
82 Last Mistress, The
38 Life Before Her Eyes, The
70 Love Songs
64 Married Life
30 Meet Bill
33 Miss Conception
53 Mister Lonely
74 Mongol
52 Mother of Tears, The
52 My Blueberry Nights
71 My Brother Is an Only Child
84 My Winnipeg
61 On the Rumba River
69 Operation Filmmaker
61 OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83 Paranoid Park
72 Priceless
51 Promotion, The
55 Quid Pro Quo
29 Red Roses and Petrol
79 Reprise
71 Roman de gare
56 Sangre de mi sangre
51 Savage Grace
76 Shotgun Stories
66 Son of Rambow
70 Standard Operating Procedure
62 Stuck
72 Surfwise
81 Tell No One
56 Then She Found Me
xx Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic
71 To the Limit
54 Tracey Fragments, The
70 Trumbo
72 Tuya's Marriage
83 U2 3D
56 Unknown Woman
86 Up the Yangtze
79 Visitor, The
62 Wackness, The
37 War, Inc.
64 Water Lilies
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?
55 Without the King
72 Woman on the Beach
64 XXY
67 Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75 Young@Heart

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Stranger Than Fiction
Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment


7.9

based on 35 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 93 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for some disturbing images, sexuality, brief language and nudity

Starring Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Queen Latifah, Dustin Hoffman, and Emma Thompson

Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, an IRS Agent whose world is turned upside-down when he begins to hear his life being chronicled by a narrator only he can hear. The Narrator, Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), a nearly forgotten author of tragic novels, is struggling to complete her latest and best book, unaware that her protagonist is alive and uncontrollably guided by her words. Fiction and reality collide when the bewildered and hilariously resistant Harold hears the Narrator say that events have been set in motion that will lead to his imminent death. (Sony)

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Drama \| Fantasy \| Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Zach Helm
DIRECTED BY:	Marc Forster
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 27, 2007 Theatrical: November 10, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	113 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

In a feat of performing imagination, Ferrell turns his usual extroversion inside out and his usual zaniness into precision, and makes it all work for him.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Stranger Than Fiction is slicker than Kaufman's work - and Forster's direction is certainly more studio-ish than Kaufman collaborators Spike Jonze's or Michel Gondry's. But it's a clever idea, and you feel a little smarter watching the thing unfurl.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

What a thoughtful film this is, and how thought-stirring. Marc Forster's Stranger Than Fiction comes advertised as a romance, a comedy, a fantasy, and it is a little of all three, but it's really a fable, a "moral tale."

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Stranger than Fiction is a wonderful cinematic experience - a welcome way to spend a chilly autumn evening.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Maybe the best thing about Stranger Than Fiction is the way it extracts unexpected work from underrated actors.

Empire Ian Freer

It might be Charlie Kaufman lite, but this is a great date movie for the discerning -- smart, ingenious and heartwarming.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

In a film that easily could have been cold or ironical, Ferrell provides the emotional thrust.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Intricately plotted without being contrived and exhilarating in its eccentricity.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

With a track record that stretches from "Monster's Ball" all the way to "Finding Neverland," Forster is clearly a director at ease with a wide range of material. He's found confection-land here, setting his beater on ready-whip and mixing the dough just fine.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Stranger Than Fiction may not be the typical crowd-pleaser, but it's a sweet, funny, intelligent film that showcases just how much Ferrell can do, even when he's doing less.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

It has a nifty premise and outstanding performances from Ferrell, as the protagonist-in-progress, and Emma Thompson, as his blocked creator.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Foster finds the common ground on which his eclectic cast can meet (no small feat when they range from brassy Queen Latifah to "Arrested Development"'s deadpan Tony Hale) and keeps the story's sweetness from devolving into saccharine kitsch.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

When Ferrell and Hoffman do their thing together, a charming bit of whimsy becomes something more. It becomes really, really funny.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

This is a Ferrell you've never seen before, nailing a role that calls for breakneck humor in the final race against the clock and touching gravity in the love scenes with Gyllenhaal.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Amid all this metafictional hoopla lies the real heart of the movie, a tentative romance between Ferrell and a tax-withholding baker played with adorable prickliness by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

A refreshingly grown-up comedy, "Stranger" is a charming film that is unafraid to be low-key in ways that studio releases seldom are.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

It's soon apparent that a closer model for this charming romantic comedy is "Bell, Book and Candle." The direction by Marc Forster (Monster's Ball) is so fluffy it's easy to drift along and ignore the logical lapses.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Pulls us along in a state of pleasant expectation.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

While Stranger Than Fiction traffics in a bit of darkly funny existential anxiety, it also finds room for romantic fantasy and sentimental uplift.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

An oddly sweet little tale, and easily Ferrell’s most enjoyable movie in recent memory. And even though his onscreen chemistry with Gyllenhaal fills me with murderous rage, this film goes a long way towards erasing the memory of his more obnoxious roles.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Sometimes becomes too self-consciously clever, and it doesn't entirely resolve its own central dilemma. But it remains inventive and funny to the end, features fine performances from Will Ferrell and especially Emma Thompson.

Time Richard Corliss

A more sensitive Ferrell in a script that plays like Charlie Kaufman Lite: that should send up breakthrough and Oscar signals. It doesn't quite, though. The movie is clever, but a little too pleased with its own clockwork intricacy.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Teems with ideas both literary and existential, which might make it unbearably precious, were it not redeemed by woozy charm and some serious acting from Will Ferrell.

The Hollywood Reporter John DeFore

In practice, "Fiction" isn't nearly that unusual. Less like "Adaptation" than a smarter version of "Click," the picture pleases while remaining unchallenging to a broad audience.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Like Jim Carrey, Ferrell seems to think that the way to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor is to drain himself of everything that audiences love about him.

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

A good movie but not a great one, Stranger Than Fiction is reminiscent of the films of Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) but lacks that writer's conceptual rigor and imaginative power.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

An eminently easy-to-watch piece of one-joke pop japery, is a movie that mimics the I'm-a-character-in-my-own-life metaphysical playfulness of "The Truman Show."

New York Post Kyle Smith

A boldly original undertaking: It's the first movie ever to come up with the idea of remaking "The Truman Show."

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

With its twist, the movie leaps into a fresh realm of fantasy. But director Marc Forster and first-time screenwriter Zach Helm don't know what to do when they get there, and the film's greatest asset almost becomes its undoing.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The picture is an overworked trifle: There's so much going on in it that it becomes hard to care about ANYTHING that's going on in it. The story in Stranger Than Fiction is stranger than fiction. But what good is it if it's unreadable?

Village Voice Jim Ridley

Stranger Than Fiction merely layers whimsy upon whimsy. As written, Harold Crick is no more convincing a human being than he is an IRS agent; Kay Eiffel's writing, supposedly good enough to inspire the career-long devotion of a literature professor (Dustin Hoffman), sounds as dully declamatory as movie-trailer narration.

Slate Dana Stevens

Seems to suffer from low self-esteem. Why can't this movie see that it doesn't need a hulking meta-narrative apparatus to make us care about its story? It had us at hello--or would have, if not for the excess of high-concept trickery.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

There's a problem: This romance isn't developed enough to be truly satisfying -- it's fat-free SnackWell's when you want Godiva. It's not the original story we signed up for -- or thought we did.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The bad news is that Ferrell's modestly likable performance is the ONLY good thing about this misguided comedy that's so tiresomely written, badly acted by a stellar cast and ploddingly directed (by art-house whiz Marc Forster) that it just never quite gets off the ground.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Watching the movie made me long for the big , risky ideas and entertainingly fearless filmmaking in David O. Russell's "I Heart Huckabees " and Spike Jonze's "Adaptation ," which Kaufman wrote. Both were similarly conceptual escapades, but they let it all hang out.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.9 (out of 10) based on 93 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Vik M. gave it a9:
Ok, it was actually a really good movie.. I enjoyed it. It made you think and will ferrel is better in serious movies. Not my favorite, but i enjoyed it a whole lot

MCE gave it a7:
I agree that it was fun but could have been done better. Not sure what Queen L.'s contribution was and what the value of the time spent on the love interest was (other than to become a "date" movie. But I did enjoy it.

Brentoni gave it a7:
A clever script and a good love story keep this one going. Its mildly funny at times. The soundtrack is great. I personally thought the ending was disappointing.

Mark S. gave it a7:
Very enjoyable, and a nice idea. But does make you wonder if it could have been done better.

Peter J. gave it a7:
I really enjoyed the whole concept of this movie. It could have been done better, but it was still very entertaining and well worth the watch.

RJ C. gave it an8:
I thought this was a wonderful concept that was almost well carried out. It seems, though, that the filmmakers refused to let emotion into play for the audience -- in times when the actors could have been let to go all out and fetch some real emotion for what really were emotionally charged moments at the end, the film makers settled instead for irony. Too bad. The ending sucked.

[Anonymous] gave it a7:
A refreshingly clever concept, and generally executed well. However, the film is too small and slow to really leave what i may term an everlasting impact on our minds. Nonetheless, despite some slow spots, the film is definitely worth a watch.

Stranger Than Fiction Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment

Stranger Than Fiction
Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment