Stranger Than Fiction

Okay, the premise doesn't make any logical sense, the ending is disappointingly weak, and if it's trying to impart any life lessons, they're overly simplistic and cliched.  But I really liked Stranger Than Fiction.  I just saw it, in a theater about as crowded as you'd expect it to be at 11:50 on Saturday morning, and left the theater thinking it was really terrific.  A good amount of funny, but also really satisfying to watch, really well-crafted and delicate and thoughtful.  Will Ferrell is terrific.  There's a lot of The Truman Show in this movie, the same kind of high-concept plot that defies ordinary logic but can end up working anyway, in the right hands.  This is what Click tried to be but didn't quite succeed.  I liked Click, but this is a much, much better movie than Click.  It's completely mainstream, with hardly an edge, perhaps the polar opposite of Borat on some kind of comedy continuum that runs from,I don't know, understated to slapstick.  I laughed during Borat.  But, for me, this was an awful lot more satisfying.  Despite the disappointing ending.  I'm pretty much on board with Roger Ebert's review here.  Some more positive stuff from Rotten Tomatoes here and here.  Or you can read the best of the flip-side view -- persuasive, but I still liked the movie -- over here and here.

Minor detail spoiler: One of the characters reveals at one point during the movie that she went to Harvard Law School but dropped out after realizing she was spending more time baking cookies for her study group than studying, and she was getting Ds.  I was able to ignore the logical fuzziness in most of the film, but I was completely unable to buy anything about this.  No one gets Ds.  :)

Comments

[Jessica]

Speaking of logical fuzziness, the movie also didn't do its homework on its supposed setting. The Chicago geography is all wrong, from the supposed "subway" stations and bus routes to the addresses and neighborhoods. Easy research to do, too. But, I liked the movie. I think the movie is more satisfying if you accept that Harold Crick was not "real," and that it was fully and only a story about writer's block and creative choices.

[MD]

I just saw this last night and enjoyed it as well. Ferrell's performance was good, and understated - reminded me of of Carrey's turn in Eternal Sunshine in some ways. -I found the ending somewhat disappointing too, but they had built it up so much, must have been hard to come up with anything satisfying and clever. Nevertheless, I had a good time.