Stranger Than Fiction: B+

I've often wondered what it would be like for someone to sit down after viewing one of Charlie Kaufman's wildly clever, meta-within-meta films like Adaptation or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and decide to adapt it to film. After thinking this idea I usually scoff with the knowledge that if nothing else, Kaufman's scripts are tighly coiled, well paced, metaphorical theories on existence that are second-to-none in both quality of structure design and originality. How could anyone think to interpret one of Hollywood's most talented screenwriter's? Apparently Zach Helm thought he was up to the task and the result is the infinitely pleasing, soft core romantic dramedy Stranger Than Fiction.

Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is a man almost too thin for existence. He lives his live by regulations too arbritrary for other humans to comprehend (he brushes his teeth an inanely high number of times). He lives completely alone. He likes being an IRS agent (for which he is vehemently despised by most everyone). His life is being narrated by a woman that, in his own words, "has an better vocabulary than me". That, and she is also predicting his imminent doom. So Crick, with the help of literary theorist, Professor Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), sets out to find out why exactly he is being picked off by the heavens and in the process...you know, find himself. Eventually he finds that the woman narrating is actually telling the story of his life. The woman is Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson, who here conjures a passionate, teetering-on-the-brink presence that is both the film's undoing and its greatest asset) and she is famous the world over for her beautifully written tragedies. Tragedies as in the main hero dies. Harold Crick is the main hero, and that isn't good.

Stranger Than Fiction was directed by Marc Forster, that previous alchemist of the warm-hearted and the treachly in Finding Neverland, with interesting gimmicks (computer panels illustrate at random his every move with numbers and strange, yet infectious, patterns) and an inviting color palette. And the performances themselves play nicely off each other. Will Ferrell, renowned for his energy, has turned his "straight-man" schtick into an art and manages to deliver several laughs. Maggie Gyllenhaal, as his enemy-turned-girlfriend Ana Pascal, is a woman whose wit and charm spring from a fiery well of nihilism. Dustin Hoffman and Queen Latifah, as Karen's assistant, play characters who are barely there and yet the time they inhabit is enjoyable (if only for the knowledge that you know they could do more). What remains then is the script.

Zach Helm frames the thing as an occasionally delightful, alomst witty, confection. He pulls out effective gags for aiming to hit the middlebrow and succeeding with his riffs on "wibbly wobbly" and such. As everything starts progressing, turning darker and possibly deadly, the inability for Helm to capture Kaufman's penchant for insane melodrama, that knack for piercing insight into a character's life, becomes more visible...and more irritating. The essential problems of the whole movie are summed up in its last few scenes. When told that her changed ending to Harold's story is just "good", Karen responds "I'm ok with good". Too bad then, since a film with such an interesting premise shouldn't have settled.