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Movies / On DVD / Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

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Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

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Reviews Counted:165

Fresh:119

Rotten:46

Average Rating:6.8/10

Consensus: A fun, whimsical tale about about an office drone trying to save his life from his narrator. The cast obviously is having a blast with the script, but Stranger Than Fiction's tidy lessons make this metaphysical movie feel like Charlie Kaufman-lite.

Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for some disturbing images, sexuality, brief language and nudity.

Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins

Genre: Comedies

Theatrical Release:Nov 10, 2006 Wide

Box Office: $40,137,776

Synopsis: One morning, a seemingly average and generally solitary IRS agent named Harold Crick begins to hear a female voice narrating his every action, thought and feeling in alarmingly precise detail.... One morning, a seemingly average and generally solitary IRS agent named Harold Crick begins to hear a female voice narrating his every action, thought and feeling in alarmingly precise detail. Harold's carefully controlled life is turned upside down by this narration only he can hear, and when the voice declares that Harold Crick is facing imminent death, he realizes he must find out who is writing his story and persuade her to change the ending. The voice in Harold's head turns out to be the once celebrated, but now nearly forgotten, novelist Karen "Kay" Eiffel (Emma Thompson), who is struggling to find an ending for what might be her best book. Her only remaining challenge is to figure out a way to kill her main character, but little does she know that Harold Crick is alive and well and inexplicably aware of her words and her plans for him. To make matters worse, Kay's publisher has dispatched a hard-nosed "assistant," Penny Escher (Queen Latifah), to force Kay to finish her novel and finish off Harold Crick. Desperate to take control of his destiny and avoid an untimely demise, Harold seeks help from a literary theorist named Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who suggests that Harold might be able to change his fate by turning his story from a tragedy into a comedy. Professor Hilbert suggests that Harold try to follow one of comedy's most elemental formulas: a love story between two people who hate each other. His suggestion leads Harold to initiate an unlikely romance with a free-spirited baker named Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal). As Harold experiences true love and true life for the first time, he becomes convinced that he has escaped his fate, as his story seems to be taking on all the trappings of a comedy in which he will not, and cannot, die. But Harold is unaware that in a Karen Eiffel tragedy, the lead characters always die at exactly the moment when they have the most to live for. Harold and Kay find themselves in unexplored territory as each must weigh the value of a single human existence against what might just be an immortal work of art: a novel about life and death -- and taxes. --© Sony Pictures [More]

Starring: Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman

Starring: Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Tony Hale, Queen Latifah, Kristin Chenoweth

Director: Marc Forster

Director: Marc Forster
Producer: Lindsay Doran, Aubrey Henderson, Jim Miller, Brittany Daniel
Studio: Sony Pictures Entertainment

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Release:

Feb 27, 2007

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Reviews for Stranger Than Fiction

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61 - 80 (sorted by date)
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It's the trippy process of storytelling that counts.

Full Review Source: www.susangranger.com | comment Comment
11/11/06
Susan Granger
Susan Granger
www.susangranger.com

A sweet comedy, an antidote to the over-the-top, vulgar and politically reactionary 'Borat.'

Full Review Source: Compuserve | comment Comment
11/11/06
Harvey S. Karten
Harvey S. Karten
Compuserve

This slightly fantastical, tragi-comic idea ended up in the care of precisely the right people.

Full Review Source: Jam! Movies | comment Comment
11/11/06
Bruce Kirkland
Bruce Kirkland
Jam! Movies

[Screenwriter Zach Helm is] called by those in the know “the next Charlie Kaufman...”

Full Review Source: Orlando Weekly | comment Comment
11/11/06
Cole Haddon
Cole Haddon
Orlando Weekly

Provides a pleasant evening in the theater.

Full Review Source: San Diego Metropolitan | comment Comment
11/11/06
Jean Lowerison
Jean Lowerison
San Diego Metropolitan

Ferrell proves just the right choice, nicely underplaying for a change and ratcheting up his game opposite major talents.

Full Review Source: Maxim | comment Comment
11/10/06
Pete Hammond
Pete Hammond
Maxim

Will Ferrell is a more than worthy heir to Lemmon, Hanks, Brazil’s Jonathan Pryce and Something Wild’s Jeff Daniels.

Full Review Source: FilmStew.com | comment Comment
11/10/06
Brett Buckalew
Brett Buckalew
FilmStew.com

Satisfaction comes from the small moments, the simple pleasures. At least, that's the argument Stranger Than Fiction makes — and it presents a pretty convincing case.

Full Review Source: Los Angeles Daily News | comment Comment
11/10/06
Glenn Whipp
Glenn Whipp
Los Angeles Daily News

A trippy trifle from the Charlie Kaufman/Michel Gondry school of pop metafiction.

Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide | comment Comment
11/10/06
Maitland McDonagh
Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide's Movie Guide

Stranger Than Fiction seems like an old episode of the Twilight Zone, and the idea would have worked better as one of Rod Serling's half-hour epistles on human foibles.

Full Review Source: Toronto Star | comment Comment
11/10/06
Peter Howell
Peter Howell
Toronto Star
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Stranger Than Fiction is both about a novel and like a novel; you eagerly await the turning of the pages.

Full Review Source: Seattle Times | comment Comment
11/10/06
Moira MacDonald
Moira MacDonald
Seattle Times

It doesn't coast on its premise but follows where it leads, which is into some serious territory. What might have been a joke with a tagged-on sentimental ending becomes instead a sensitive movie that affirms the value of life.

Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | comment Comment
11/10/06
Mick LaSalle
Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Stranger Than Fiction is subversive in its own, low-key way.

Full Review Source: San Diego Union-Tribune | comment Comment
11/10/06
James Hebert
James Hebert
San Diego Union-Tribune

Hanging on a high concept never fully supported by its story, Stranger Than Fiction stays aloft thanks to an exceptionally appealing cast.

Full Review Source: Sacramento Bee | comment Comment
11/10/06
Carla Meyer
Carla Meyer
Sacramento Bee

This movie is to Ferrell what The Truman Show was to Jim Carrey, the film that allows the comic to put both feet on the ground -- and to stimulate a full range of emotions.

Full Review Source: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle | comment Comment
11/10/06
Jack Garner
Jack Garner
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

Stranger than Fiction would be pretty close to a perfect movie if the ending weren't so weak. Actually, it's still pretty satisfying, but there is a perfect ending out there that surely occurred to Helm, but it is missing in action.

Full Review Source: Reel.com | comment Comment
11/10/06
Pam Grady
Pam Grady
Reel.com

Willfully eccentric, odd in tone, it is an English major's comedy, a wry exploration of plot, narrative, character and a writer's imprint on her or his work.

Full Review Source: Orlando Sentinel | comment Comment
11/10/06
Roger Moore
Roger Moore
Orlando Sentinel

I loved the little schematic diagrams that track Harold's too-linear existence. Zach Helm's script is very funny and occasionally shocking.

Full Review Source: Oregonian | comment Comment
11/10/06
Mike Russell
Mike Russell
Oregonian

It seems like the screenwriter may have suffered a shortage of ideas and remedied the problem by watching Charlie Kaufman films.

Full Review Source: Newark Star-Ledger | comment Comment
11/10/06
Lisa Rose
Lisa Rose
Newark Star-Ledger
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

With its musings on free will and God, the story may not be original, but caring about its hero is automatic for the audience. That's more than most movies can say.

Full Review Source: New York Post | comment Comment
11/10/06
Kyle Smith
Kyle Smith
New York Post
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
 
 
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