Playing a constipated nullity emphasizes those physical characteristics of Ferrell's — the ungainly height and the doughy body; the little blueberry eyes in the pancake face; the slow-to-ignite gaze — that become assets only when energized with a comic charge, whether manic or slow-and-unrelenting. Ferrell wouldn't have broken through to moviegoers in Old School (2003) if his character hadn't gone streaking and blared music from his muscle car. (When Ferrell comes at you full throttle, it's like standing in front of a guy popping a wheelie on a bulldozer.) Nor does Ferrell match up with, or complement, Gyllenhaal, whose style is naturalistically fluid and whose persona is sharp to the point of tartness. It's a mystery why they hired him for this script, unless it has something to do with those nasty numbers.
Forster does keep it moving along, and I liked the design, which situates the characters in massive, individually stylized interiors. But Forster, who also made Finding Neverland (2004), is becoming a master of the soggy-fanciful (that 1940s Hollywood specialty). Stranger Than Fiction feels like a Charlie Kaufman script gone damp to the point of mildew.
Article comments
1 - Paul
To quote Thoreau in a movie review is the first sign of over-thinking the film.
To reject its imperfect characters, who only fleetingly espouse such grand philosophies as half-baked is missing the point.
Stranger Than Fiction is smart not because it is academic, high-brow, or philosophical. But because it rejects such concerns in favor of human emotion.
Consider the final conversation between Eiffel and
Hilbert, when he tells her the book is no masterpiece without Harold's death. She responds that because he knows, and accepts it anyway, it is inhuman to allow it to happen. She refuses to sacrifice humanity for art. This movie is a celebration of humanity. It is emotional art that perhaps compromises itself in terms of literary merit, but soars majestically as an example of humanism. The characters are flawed because they must be. If they were better, cleverer, more rational or more well versed in Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, the movie would be a plodding, academic investigation of art and humanity. And that would be worse than not allowing Harold Crick to die.
2 - me
You wouldn't know a good movie if it bit you in the ass.
3 - Dr Dreadful
Do movies often do that? In my experience they more often suck than bite.
4 - God
get over yourself