Creative blend of cinema and literature (8/10)

Walking through the video store, my lady friend and I like to look for slightly offbeat movies that receive critical as well as popular raves.  Stranger than Fiction gets the double whammy: Ebert and Roeper give it two thumbs way up toward the ceiling, then later we find out Rotten Tomatoes has given it like a 75% positive for both critics and ordinary civilians.

I learned my lesson about going only with the critics a few years ago.  We were at the video store during the holidays with her sister and brother-in-law; I picked up Wit, also a movie with a big role for Emma Thomson.  Ol’ Roger had praised it to the rafters for being, well, witty; so I more or less sold everyone on taking it home.  It was the most dreary and depressing movie any of us had ever seen, and my movie- selection privileges were henceforth revoked.

Stranger than Fiction rewards you from the very beginning; you hear the voice of a woman narrator recounting every repetitious step in the life of IRS agent Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) while you watch his tedious life unfold on the screen.  He rises exactly at xx:yy a.m., brushes his teeth precisely zw times, walks across the street at the cross walk careful to step on the white markings, catches the bus at such and such a time, etc., etc. Continue reading →