The film struggles under its increasingly weighty pretensions to literary credibility and even tragic status, stumbling towards an unconvincing and cloying conclusion.
Comment
10/28/06
Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
72
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:165
Fresh:119
Rotten:46
Average Rating:6.8/10
Consensus: A fun, whimsical tale about about an office drone trying to save his life from his narrator. The cast obviously is having a blast with the script, but Stranger Than Fiction's tidy lessons make this metaphysical movie feel like Charlie Kaufman-lite.
Theatrical Release:01-12-2006
Synopsis: One morning, a seemingly average and generally solitary IRS agent named Harold Crick begins to hear a female voice narrating his every action, thought and feeling in alarmingly precise detail.... [More]
Starring: Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman
Director: Marc Forster
Reviews for Stranger Than Fiction
Top CriticIt might be Charlie Kaufman lite, but this is a great date movie for the discerning - smart, ingenious and heartwarming.
11/29/06
Top CriticBrilliantly written, thoughtful and frequently hilarious comedy with impressive direction and terrific performances from the entire cast.
10/28/06
Screenwriter Zach Helm's comedy has some quirky points, but it's very sugary and sentimental, and feeble compared to the work of those who have done the same sort of thing better: Woody Allen or Charlie Kaufman.
12/30/06
Top CriticA sharply clever script, witty direction and terrific performances across the board.
10/28/06
Instead of finishing with a bang it peters out, but this existential yarn is still fresh and funny enough to justify taking two hours out of your life.
11/30/06
Top CriticFinally, a Charlie Kaufman movie for people who are too stupid to understand Charlie Kaufman movies.
11/14/06
A fantasy, so it's not obligated to be logical, but it should at least have internal logic and follow its own set of rules. A failure to do so untethers the film.
11/09/06
The link between comedy and tragedy is closer than Ferrell believes but the line isn't as clever as it should be and not nearly as profound as it believes it is.
11/09/06
There's no joy in seeing Ferrell play an office drone, and the life lessons he learns are of the "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" variety.
11/09/06
[J]ust the kind of numbskull movie that critics call 'smart'.
12/31/06
Stranger Than Fiction is the most original comedy of the year, a mind-bending tale with one foot in the real world and the other in pure fiction.
11/09/06
Sure, [Crick's] more a caricature than a fully fleshed out person, but he reacts to his increasingly unbelievable situation with unexpected...believability.
11/10/06
A comedy that takes itself too seriously to be truly enjoyed.
11/10/06
While Stranger Than Fiction traffics in a bit of darkly funny existential anxiety, it also finds room for romantic fantasy and sentimental uplift.
11/10/06
Top CriticStranger Than Fiction might be film, but it moves like a novel: a literate, unhurried tale marked by softly wrought reflections on the self-made life.
11/10/06
for all its faults, it blazes new trails in mixing popular entertainment and philosophy, not to mention metaphysics, with enough panache to make it all seem eminently sensible.
11/25/06
A film well worth seeing and savoring.
11/15/06
Unlike the brainier Kaufman stories, it's easy to understand how matters are proceeding here without an air of pretentiousness.
11/24/06
The place where the film runs into problems is in trying to decide, like Harold, as to whether or not it is a comedy or a tragedy. As we know, comedy sells much better and that's the direction the film leans.
09/22/07
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