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Stranger Than Fiction
Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment
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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
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Drama
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Fantasy
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Romance
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| WRITTEN BY: |
Zach Helm
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| DIRECTED BY: |
Marc Forster
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| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: February 27, 2007
Theatrical: November 10, 2006
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| 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...
91
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.
88
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.
88
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."
88
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Stranger than Fiction is a wonderful cinematic experience - a welcome way to spend a chilly autumn evening.
83
Portland Oregonian
M. E. Russell
Maybe the best thing about Stranger Than Fiction is the way it extracts unexpected work from underrated actors.
80
Empire
Ian Freer
It might be Charlie Kaufman lite, but this is a great date movie for the discerning -- smart, ingenious and heartwarming.
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
In a film that easily could have been cold or ironical, Ferrell provides the emotional thrust.
75
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Intricately plotted without being contrived and exhilarating in its eccentricity.
75
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.
75
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.
75
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.
75
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.
75
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.
75
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.
75
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.
70
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.
70
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.
70
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Pulls us along in a state of pleasant expectation.
70
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.
70
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.
70
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.
70
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.
70
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.
70
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.
67
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.
67
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.
67
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."
63
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."
63
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.
50
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?
50
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.
50
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.
50
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.
42
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.
38
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 99 User Votes
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