Stranger than Fiction

Stranger than Fiction is a real sleeper; a Hollywood film that shows a bit of imagination, wit and intelligence. Will Farrell stars as Harold Crick, an IRS employee who lives a rigid, spartan bachelor life with no prospects of moving up or down, he is just a reliable, hardworking man with no outside activities. His world is turned upside down when one day he hears a female voice (Emma Thompson) who accurately describes what he is doing as he is doing it. She knows how he feels and what he is thinking, and he hears it all. Realizing that only he can hear her, he goes to see the company shrink, who tells him to take a vacation. But work is still his life, and Crick has been auditing Ana Pascal (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) who runs a bakery. Ana takes an immediate dislike to Crick, him being a tax man -- she deliberately withheld payment because of her objection to government funded projects -- military or otherwise. Crick is attracted to her but plods along with his work. The voice is still present -- driving him to start doing things that are out of his routine. In another part of the city, Kay Eiffel, a renowned British fictional author, is having writer's block. In all her books, her main characters die at the end, and she is having trouble figuring out how to off her newest character -- a man named Harold Crick. Her publisher sends an assistant to help her finish the book on time, named Penny Escher (Queen Latifah). Penny is a no nonsense woman with a successful record of helping complete a number of author's works. Kay dislikes her, because she sees Penny as an intrusion on her creative process. She tries to imagine all sorts of horrible accidents. Kay can only go so far as to type "little did he know that his demise was near". Crick hears this and panics. He goes to another psychologist, only to be diagnosed as a schizophrenic. However, because of his description of the kind of voice that he is hearing -- literate, British accent -- the doctor offhandedly suggests that he consult a literary professor. Enter Jules Hilbert (played by Dustin Hoffman), a professor at a local university who listens to Crick in bemusement. He dismisses him as a nut, until Crick tells him the "little did he know" statement. That intrigues him -- Hilbert has done a course and a lecture on just those very words as a subject. So he agrees to help him. A funny sequence of deduction and detection follow, with Hilbert running through the entire literary gamut of subject matter, to try to determine who the person - the living author might be. He also tells Crick to start living his life the way he wants to -- follow his dreams. Crick buys a guitar, and woos Ana. And, he succeeds. While Hilbert is deducing, Crick sees on the television an old Book Talk cable show featuring Kay, and he is stunned to find out that she is the one. Crick finds her -- not an easy task, since she is a recluse -- by going through the tax records, and Kay is shocked to see that her fictional character is a real life man. To his dismay he finds out that Kay has broken through her block and came up with a brilliant ending to the book -- where he has to die. Hilbert reads the manuscript, and later Crick himself, and they both agree. The following morning, Kay types the ending and Crick goes to work, where he is involved in an accident at the bus stop. But instead of being pronounced dead, he is still alive, and taken to the hospital. Kay goes to Hilbert (presumably referred by Crick), and show him her revised ending. Hilbert finds it okay, but not as good as the original. She knows, and realizes that some stories need to have a happy ending. Ana finds Crick in the hospital, and the movie ends with them in each other's arms.