Stranger than Fiction

[Chimera]

I saw a commercial for this movie on TV and it made me burst out laughing. It's about a man named Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) who hears the voice of a narrator commentating on his life. The narrator turns out to be a novelist (Emma Thompson), and he is one of her characters in her latest novel. The catch--she's decided to kill him off. Movie Trailer

I wish I had thought up this idea. It's great! Here's hoping a good idea will transfer into a good movie. I'm definitely going to see it, though, because I love Emma Thompson and movies about writing.  

[Tekiel]

This looks hilarious, I'm also going to see this as soon as it comes out!  (And here I thought there were no movies to look forward to for the rest of the year).

[42]

I finally saw this. It was very funny, if only to see a very subdued Will Ferrell.

The moral of the movie: Professors of Literature are pure evil and writers are psychotic killers.

[The Lost One]

And killing off IRS agents is wrong?

[Harbinger]

If it is, I don't want to be right.

[stacer]

What a hilarious movie. And a lot more subdued than most Will Ferrell movies, which makes me like it all the more--i.e., the execution was spot-on, and didn't go for the easy laughs. And what fodder for class discussion about breaking the narrator boundaries!

[Aen Elderberry]

Saw this on Saturday (we go to the movie theater about once every three months and usually the dollar show. 

It was a serious movie, not as humorous as the trailer indicated.

SPOILER ALERT * * *

I was prepared to feel betrayed if the author didn't go ahead and kill Harold.  But I really liked how it ended.  I thought her reasons for changing the ending were good.  That probably sounds harsh.  I didn't want him to die.  But when I saw the boy get on his bicycle it was obvious that he had to save the boy.  I thought, "what better way to die?  The writer has to follow through with it or it will feel like a phony happy ending.  You can't take opposition or death out of life."  And I agreed with the "evil" professor.  But I really liked how the "writer" resolved why Harold should live.  It felt justified and "real."  Rewriting just because she'd found out that he was a real person for some reason didn't feel right by itself.  But because he knew his destiny and accepted it made him a different character than was in the book.

I'm not sure my comments make any sense.  It was a tangled resolution and a weird, and fun, mixing of reality and fiction so it's hard to navigate through it.  Which is why I wanted to see it in the first place.

[Tink]

I saw this at the dollar theater last weekend and I have to say, I really liked it. My husband wasn't sure what it was (but because it was my turn, he couldn't say nay). When he saw Will Ferrell in it, he was like, "Oh, I hate that guy." I reassured him that I heard this wasn't like most of his movies.

I really like the style of the narrator's writing and I like the thing about the watch.

** Spoiler

I like how the writer pulled in the watch that saved him, since it was the watch that "caused" his death (although it was worth it to try to save the boy, of course). I agree with Hauf. I feel that the reason he lived was compelling and it made for a good reason for the author to rewrite the novel.

It seemed like there was a lot of depth to explore with irony and symbolism and such, which was cool (even if I'm too lazy to actually explore it) and I like how the it could take pretty mundane circumstances and a mundane life and make it seem really special.

I'm saying there are not flaws, but I don't feel like exploring them.