Stranger Than Fiction (Marc Forster, 2006)

[Antoine Doinel]

Trailer here

I think this looks really promising, and the cast is pretty great. Dustin Hoffman is really choosing some interesting projects lately. If Ferrell can keep his schtick dialed down, and the script stays dark and doesn't cop out for a feel good ending, this could be very very good.

[Matt]

My strong desire to see Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Latifah, Dustin Hoffman, and Tony Hale (BUSTER!) all in the same movie is severely tempered by the shouty Will Ferrell trodding the well-worn Tom Hanks/Robin Williams/Jim Carrey "I'm really a serious actor" path and by what looks like a Charlie Kaufman knock-off script. Come on, they even stuck an ELO song in the trailer.

[Antoine Doinel]

Well Matt, four months later, I'm happy to report that there is no trace of shouty Will Ferrell to be found, and this film is very much worth seeking out. Stranger Than Fiction has been glibly called a Kaufman-ripoff, but if all creatively and narratively interesting scripts have to be "chastised" as such I'll take it.

The film is something so much richer than what the trailers lead you to believe. The entire time watching it, Ferrell's perfomance reminded me of the feeling I had watching Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love for the first time; he is a completely different performer here. Subdued, subtle and generally great. The rest of the cast is equally fantastic, and despite a few saccharine moments, Stranger Than Fiction was a great, plesant surprise.

As a side note, Forster does some really interesting things with color and interiors in this film, moving from muted, cramped spaces to brighter, larger rooms as the film progresses. It's a great touch.

[jon]

I doubt Ferrell is as good in Stranger Than Fiction as he was in Kicking and Screaming.

[Cinesimilitude]

I'd heard from a few friends that Ferrell was excellent in this, and unlike anything he's done. Now that it's been said here, I think I'll search it out.

[Joe Buck]

Oh yeah, it's a nice little picture. Will Ferrell holds it in the whole time. Very understated. Whole cast is really terrific. Some might get bored with its pacing, but I thought it was a breath of fresh air to have a story take it's time. I was definitely entertained by it.

[Roger_Thornhill]

I am disappointed with Stranger Than Fiction, not that I expected it to be great, but I was hoping I'd enjoy it more. It seems too in love with it's gimmicky concept that eventually grows stale as it's one joke began to wear off. It really is nothing but a conventional romantic comedy wrapped around the narrator-in-his-head high concept featuring a man with a vapid life who begins to realize how dull his life is. In other words, we've seen this story a thousand times before and the spin given to this one just isn't enough to really make it a unique and interesting film. However, the performances are very good with Will Ferrell probably doing his best work in a film to date. It's also nice to see Dustin Hoffman, who's role in this film reminded me of a similiar role he played in I Heart Huckabees.

My girlfriend loved this film when we saw it, but then again, she thinks The English Patient is a masterpiece and that Godard has been a hack since À Bout De Souffle. I almost suffered as many punches on the shoulder for complaining about this film as I did when I told her that Little Miss Sunshine was crap.