Stranger than Fiction

By: The Dude

Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Will Ferrell, Queen Latifah, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emma Thompson
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
 
When I left the multiplex having seen Alien vs Predator, a bewildered look on my face, I recall wondering how on God’s green earth someone could take a brilliant concept and screw it up so royally.

“How can someone take a brilliant concept and screw it up so royally,” I recall asking the world as I wandered down the steps.
 
If memory serves, the same thought saunted through my mind as I watched Night at the Museum. Now, that thought is there again, this time concerning this here Stranger Than Fiction. What’s actually stranger than fiction is that someone could come up with such a brilliant twist, only to lift the lid on it within the first 10 minutes of the movie.
 
STF, to be fair, has the sort of twist that would have made M. Night Shyamalan gasp … had it been dropped on us filmgoers in the last five minutes of the movie instead of the first.
 
What happens as a result is that you get bored halfway through, fall asleep, your left foot slips off the couch, spills your beverage on the ground, which naturally leads to a fight with the woman of the house. Stupid reveal-the-twist-early movie!

I mean, what was this Marc Forster thinking? First he turns down the chance to take the helm of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Alcatraz, then he cocks up this Fiction. Good thing he waved his finger at Harry 3 or else he woulda done revealed Harry’s death or some such nonsense, thus ending the series as prematurely as the boy wizard’s first night with Hermione.

Back to STF though… so we have this fella Harold Crick who thinks he’s a taxman, but really he’s Will Ferrell, the character of a novel being written by Emma Thompson who is trying to kill him off. Problem is, he now knows she’s trying to kill him due to her annoying narration, and she doesn’t know how to kill him due to her annoying writer’s block.
 
Warning: Plot spoiler in that paragraph.

So as I said, the annoying thing regarding this film is that it’s a great idea for a movie, but it’s like a first-time stripper in its execution: half-rate, slow movie and everything is unveiled way too early.

And having just watched Ferrell in the exceedingly hilarious Talladega Nights, I was disappointed with his god-awful unfunny effort here.
 
Verbatim:
Harold Crick: “Harold frantically grabs his lamp! He shook the hell out of it for no apparent reason!”
 
In a word: Fictional