Echo Effect

Will Ferrell's accountant hears voices, and the audience has heard it all before.

by Cindy Fuchs

Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is obsessed with numbers. He counts the number of times he brushes his teeth, the number of blocks to the bus, the number of minutes he takes for lunch. Such interest in counting is useful for an IRS auditor, and, according to Stranger Than Fiction, it's also "endearing," a point underscored by occasional split screens and little animated numbers that pop up around Harold when he goes through his motions.

Harold himself appears sanguine about all his obsessive-compulsions, at least until his soothing-toned narrator suggests that something may be amiss. As his Wednesday begins the same as it always does, Harold suddenly becomes aware of this voice in the air, and pauses in his diurnal teeth-brushing. "Is someone there?" he wonders aloud.

There is. Harold's story is being written and narrated by Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), a renowned and reclusive author writing her latest novel about a character who dies. This is, apparently, her signature gesture, killing off protagonists in ways that seem poignant or meaningful for her readers. Toward this end, she sends Harold to meet the woman who will make him rethink his routine and see himself in a new way: his next auditee, a funky, passionate, beautiful baker named Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal). When he informs her of his purpose, Ana pauses, briefly, in her own morning prep: "Get bent! Taxman!"

She is striking, this angry, tattooed, tank-topped girl — even Harold can see that. She's also not easily convinced that she should let go of her protest against "the government" and go ahead and pay the percentage of her taxes she's withheld in order not to pay for corporate bailouts and other general corruption. As he gazes on her, eyes wide, the narrator interjects, "Harold wasn't prone to fantasies," but as he lapses into one, the film follows suit: Ana appears in slow motion, her finger in her mouth. "You're staring at my tits," Ana informs Harold. "Only as a representative of the U.S. government," he insists.

AN EXTRA IN THE MOVIE ADAPTATION OF THE SEQUEL TO YOUR LIFE: Will Ferrell gets into character.

The exchange is reasonably clever, but more importantly, it settles the trajectory of their relationship: Ana will eventually fall in love with Harold (it's hard to say why, except that it's written), and he will discover in her a profound reason not only to change his routine but also to live. That is, Ana gives Harold reason to resist the fate he's dealt by Kay, who at last appears onscreen, smoking a cigarette on the roof of her swank apartment building. Frustrated by apparent writer's block, she's unable to conjure the precisely right way to kill Harold, which means her manuscript is delayed.

Here comes the cuteness. While Harold's romance gives Zach Helm's script its rudimentary plot, Stranger Than Fiction's primary relationship will be his and Kay's. Though they don't actually converse until late in the film, they are aware, after a fashion, of one another's existence. In order for that relationship to develop without contact, the film provides each with someone approximating the usual romantic comedic confidant. Kay's editor sends over an assistant, Penny (Queen Latifah), to speed along the resolution of the manuscript, and Harold, rejecting the judgment of a therapist (Linda Hunt) regarding his sanity, seeks the advice of a literature professor, Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman).

Even as these supporting characters appear to complicate the film's cunning metafiction, they mostly serve very typical functions. Penny attends to Kay's general life needs, cleaning ashtrays in Kay's spotless white-on-white apartment and offering encouragement toward completing the manuscript. ("I'm available to you every minute of every day," she says sternly, adding, "I do not abide narcotics.")

Hilbert, for his not-so-witty part, tries to discern whether Harold is living in a comedy or a tragedy; having heard Kay refer to his "imminent death," Harold is understandably eager to learn which it is. He is, of course, the only character in this part of the plot who can hear Kay's voiceover, leading his co-workers to observe his strange behavior with concern, though Hilbert seems inclined to believe him, at least to his face. After listening to Harold's complaint that he feels like a character in his own life, Hilbert notes sagely, "Dramatic irony: It'll fuck you every time."

He's more right than he knows. Or maybe he knows exactly how right he is, given the film's relentless archness. After a short while, all its vigorous efforts to channel Charlie Kaufman and Andrew Niccol, not to mention Ferrell's following in Jim Carrey's familiar footsteps, leave Stranger Than Fiction looking rather like a retread. Too familiar and too coy, the movie shares thematic concerns with director Marc Forster's roundly reprimanded Stay (identity, fate and space as metaphor), though it lacks that film's adventurousness. Instead, it falls back on easily digested quirks and pleasantries.

(c_fuchs@citypaper.net)

Stranger Than Fiction

Directed by Marc ForsterA Sony Pictures releaseOpens Friday at area theaters