Classifying the genre that Stranger Than Fiction is exactly can be tough. It has lots of comedic elements, but not the sort of goofiness that you normally get from Ferrell. This is Ferrell playing the straight man, but still with his wonderful charm and silly facial expressions. So I'd classify this movie as somewhere between a dark comedy and a romantic comedy, with a helping of drama as well.
Will Ferrell (Talladega Nights, Old School, Elf) breaks out of his slapstick mold by playing Harold Crick, a straight-laced, routine-driven IRS auditor whose world is controlled by numbers and the status quo. Every day, Harold brushes his teeth the same number of times, he goes to bed at the same time, he takes the same number of steps to the bus stop. You could say that Harold was a bit OCD. OK, he counts everything, so maybe more than just a bit.
To express this, the filmmakers chose to have a G.U.I. (graphic user interface) overlay during the first part of the movie. What this means for you is that you get a graphic visualization of what Harold is counting, done in a sort of technical looking way. It was a really cool and stylized visual element that immediately drew me in.
So Harold literally lives and dies by the clock, well wristwatch, actually. His days and nights are very regimented until one day, that all changes. He begins to hear a woman's voice narrating his life. And the voice is correct each time! At first, he thinks he is going crazy. But then the voice goes away from time to time, so he decides that this can only be related to a book somehow. And the person writing that book aims to end the book by killing Harold Crick! He seeks the assistance of a well-respected literary authority, played perfectly by Dustin Hoffman (Meet the Fokkers, Rain Man), who begins the task of figuring out which author it could be (after first thinking that Crick is a bit insane as well). In the meantime, Crick meets Ana Pascale (Maggie Gyllenhaal - Mona Lisa Smile, Monster House), a free-spirited bakery owner who intentionally short-changed the government on her taxes as a protest. Of course, as her IRS auditor, Ana despises Harold, at first. Then, through chance encounters orchestrated by the magical "voice", Harold begins to fall in love with Ana. He realizes that he really wants to live and must stop the author from doing away with him.
Fortunately for Harold, Karen Eiffel is a brilliant author who has had writer's block for the last ten years. She just can't seem to figure out how to kill her hero, Harold Crick, in her latest tragic novel "Death and Taxes". British acting genius Emma Thompson (Dead Again, Love Actually) is perfect as the chain-smoking tortured soul who has churned out many famed novels, but just can't seem to finish this one. Her publisher sends in an assistant (Queen Latifah - Last Holiday, Bringing Down the House) to help her along. A fixer, if you will. But Karen will have none of it, and so Harold survives... for the time being. And then one day, Karen has an epiphany about how she'll do it.
You'll have to see for yourself how the movie comes to a screaming conclusion, but it's completely and utterly brilliant. Every actor in this film is perfectly cast, although I found Queen Latifah a bit wasted in her role as she didn't have a lot of screen time. There are a nice selection of special features including featurettes that explain everything from the location to the actors chosen to the G.U.I. There are also 2 extended/deleted scenes that are "interviews" that were seen playing in the background during the movie (well, one was and the other was cut). They are both chock full of funny ad libs and star Kristin Chenoweth (RV) as the sunny interviewer. Good stuff.
This is not a movie to rent, but to buy. I really liked Ferrell in this role and those who only think they like his slapstick routine need to give this a chance. Go into the movie expecting not to roll on the floor laughing, but to be completely charmed and won over by a different Will Ferrell than you've ever seen before. Highly recommended.
