Stranger Than Fiction (2006) Director - Marc Forster; Starring - Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Queen Latifah, Dustin Hoffman; Screenplay - Zach Helm; Rated PG-13 for disturbing images, brief language and sexuality, nudity; see trailer here.

OK, see, here's the thing: I hear voices in my head.

No, I'm not talking about the mental illness kinds of voices, or the Joan of Arc "God is speaking to me" variety. It's just that in the infrequent attempts I've made at writing fiction, for me the clearest way to envision my characters is to start with the conversations. The things they say to each other, and how they say them, give me the easiest grasp on what I want the characters to be. As a result, when I'm trying to put those ideas to paper...I hear voices. Watching Stranger Than Fiction makes me think I'm not the only one.

When a psychiatrist proves to be ineffectual, Harold seeks the advice of Professor Jules Hibbert (Dustin Hoffman), a professor of literature to help him understand what the narration may mean, and more importantly, how he can use it to avoid his own death. Hibbert convinces Harold that he must figure out what the story of Harold's life actually is, and his place in it, to determine whether he can affect the outcome. That quest comprises half of the film.

The other half centers on an author named Karen Eiffel (Thompson). Karen has written several successful books, but is currently battling a ferocious case of writer's block. Her publisher has sent Penny Escher (Queen Latifah) to assist Karen in finishing her long overdue novel. Karen would be perfectly content to submit the book if she could just work her way past one stumbling block: she doesn't know how to kill the main character - Harold Crick.

Karen is dealing with her own personal issues, in conjunction with the writer's block. She has health issues that may be lending a greater sense of urgency to complete her latest work. She also has some questions about what legacy she may leave behind. How those issue can or should be resolved would be further complicated if she were to learn that Harold is in fact a real live person, and that her choices may determine his fate.

Given this kind of plot, one would think that the film might play out as a weightier film, perhaps an absurdist existential comedy along the lines of the Spike Jonez/Charlie Kaufmann collaboration on Adaptation. Instead, director Marc Foster and first time screenwriter Zach Helm opt for a lighter touch with the material and the end result is uneven but entertaining.

The films strengths lie in Harold's storyline and his journey to find meaning in his life. Harold's life redefines the term mundane. There is little that deviates from routine from Harold in his life as an IRS auditor. So when the narrator intrudes on his life from out of nowhere, he's ill equipped to deal with it.

The narration may be the only thing that helps him cope with the other matter Harold is ill equipped for: falling in love. He is assigned to audit the proprietor of a bakery named Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Ms. Pascal is totally unrepentant about underreporting her taxes, couching her reasons for doing so in the spirit of civil disobedience. As Harold proceeds with the audit, he finds himself irrevocably drawn to this woman who embodies chaos and anarchy as counter to his world of order.

Ferrell is actually compelled by the nature of his character to scale down his performance in comparison to some of his more over the top works like this year's Talladega Nights. I was surprise to find that he can actually do so with a fair amount of skill. His Harold is not so much meek, as simply closed off to everything outside of his world. When he has to open up in order to find his "story" and see what else is out there, Ferrell seems to be genuinely discovering some of these joys for the first time in his life.

When Harold comes to terms with the feelings he's having for Ana, he's genuinely at a loss for how to continue further. Once he does make his affections known, I was astonished at how simply the chemistry worked between Gyllenhaal and Ferrell. They wouldn't be a pairing I would normally imagine as working well as an on-screen couple, but they make it work, albeit seemingly all too quickly in the on screen pacing.

I was disappointed that the parallel storyline with Thompson's Eiffel and Latifah's Escher isn't nearly as compelling, at least in part because both characters feel woefully underwritten. Escher is ostensibly set up to be a sort of conscience for Eiffel at the same time as trying to force Eiffel's muse along. Yet the few exchanges they have together seem reduced to Escher asking a few basic expository questions, which spur some basic monologue from Eiffel. There's almost nothing of substance there, and it feels like wasted opportunities.

Thompson, for her part, does as much as she can to wring life out of Eiffel's character. The points where we see her working through her own creative process, envisioning her own death as she tries to imagine what her character would feel in those moments are entertaining, and provide some truly entertaining scenes in displaying some of the more ghoulish aspects of the writer's mindset. The scene with Escher in the ICU of a hospital is golden.

And yet there are still some avenues with Eiffel's character that feel woefully unexplored. The health issues are hinted at strongly, and don't necessarily need more exposition on what they are or how they're impacting Eiffel. But there's no real sense of how they may play into her character's motivations either for her own life, or for the artistic choices she ultimately makes, particularly in regards to the ending of the film. There was a point where I found myself thinking the ending was a bit of a copout, before deciding that it worked within the film's own internal logic. But I could not help but feel that I was filling in some of the gaps on my own to make that leap possible.

A last point of unfulfilled potential lies in the parallels between Hoffman's Hibbert and Eiffel as the two opposite ends of the writing process as author and audience; there are similar scenes in Hibbert's moments with Crick where he explains some aspects of narrative structure and theme to Harold that feel to me like they were meant to provide the more practical side of the creative process in comparison to Eiffel's "visions" of how it worked. Even if one isn't a writer, I thought this was interesting because he distills it down to basic elements that anyone can grasp. Combined with Eiffel's imaginings, I found it to be a creative way to show how some authors see the world that's accessible for everyone. However this parallel idea disappears in the third act. As a result, I'm not entirely sure why it was there in the first place.

Despite the films flaws, I find myself overwhelmingly recommending it for a reason that may bear little meaning to anyone who has never written extensively, but for me it encapsulated the heart of the movie in a nutshell.

As in any romantic comedy, there comes that moment where Harold comes to Ana and makes his intentions known. There's a gesture made to show the earnestness of this declaration of affection by the protagonist, and this film is no exception. Without giving too much away, Harold brings Ana a gift. When what that gift is is revealed, I heard a number of chuckles from the audience. However, I can guarantee that I laughed loudest and hardest of the people in the auditorium.

Because there's a joke in Harold's gift and when he explains it, it's obvious what the joke is and for a visual medium like film the joke is fair. It's funny but not in a knock you out of your seat way. What made the joke resonate more deeply for me was in the fact that the joke as it would appear on the page is an absolutely inspired pun. It's a written joke acted out on screen, and it's in that moment that I felt like the one thing the film does successfully more than anything else is capture the essence of writing. In Harold's thread, it is not so much a film adaptation of a book translated to film. It is a book itself, already written and living itself out through the actors projected onto the screen.

It may be the depiction of this particular approach to the creative process is why Stranger Than Fiction held so much appeal for me, despite being in a genre I tend to avoid. It may not hold the same kind of appeal for non-writers. It may not hold an appeal for writers who approach fiction differently than I do. Your mileage may vary.

What I can say is that Stranger Than Fiction bore itself out to be one of the more earnest romantic comedies I've seen in some time. It also gives some glimpse into the creative process that's only been articulated in this particular way a few times before. That alone makes it worth recommending.

Because I can't be the only person out there who hears voices.

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