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18 / 08 / 2005
Sudoku! Have a go at the online Sudoku game.

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See the rest of the reviews here.

Stranger Than Fiction

Cast: Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Queen Latifah. Directed by Mark Forster. Story: An author's book comes to life. Running Time: 1hr 53 minutes. UK Certificate 12A.

Stranger Than Fiction is a peculiar one. It's an interesting story that unfortunately has nowhere to go - but it's still better than most.

The opening is joyous - overlaid with graphic labels and cheeky animations like Ed Norton's apartment scene in Fight Club, within seconds we're completely on top of Harold Crick's humdrum little world. In a change of career path from comedies such as Anchorman and Talladega Nights, Will Ferrell brings the solemn Crick to life and does a damn fine job of it. When Crick starts hearing Emma Thompson's voice in his head, narrating his life, his world starts to shake. Emma Thompson is, in fact, writing a book about a supposedly fictitious chap called Harold Crick and somehow the two Cricks are one and the same. It's a premise with great potential, but it doesn't quite live up to it.

Here's the problem. Once Harold and his author meet up, they start behaving in a manner completely at odds with real people. I'm not going to tell you what they do, but I can tell you what they don't. They don't say, "I wonder why our meeting isn't in the book," they don't try rewriting lines or throwing pages away, they don't try starting again with a different name, they don't see what happens when she writes, "Harold Crick farted so loud that the office windows shattered" - in fact they don't mess about with the idea AT ALL. The path that the plot takes from this point is really hard to buy, so much so that it destroys all the hard work put into the characterisation. However, it's acted very well - Dustin Hoffman is particularly watchable as the literature professor who helps out, Tony Hale (Buster in Arrested Development) adds a welcome frisson of abstract humour, and Maggie Gyllenhaal gives possibly the best single-line delivery of the year with her venomous, "get bent, TAX MAN!" In fact, everything else is great - the story is told sensitively and with great skill, as you'd expect from director Mark Forster - it's just the characters' actions I have trouble with.

Stranger Than Fiction could have been a great movie. If you can avoid thinking about what the players should have done and you enjoy quiet movies like Broken Flowers, you'll love it. However, the story does have some fairly large stumbling blocks in it so you might say that, unlike Mark Forster's previous work Finding Neverland, it Peters out instead of Panning out. Ho ho.

I enjoyed this film: 4/5

I think the average moviegoer will enjoy it: 4/5

Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: 0/5

To enjoy this film you should be: able to ignore the plot's shortcomings.