I'm just an average man
With an average life.
I work from nine to five
Hey, hell, I pay the price.
All I want is to be left alone
In my average home.
But why do I always feel
Like I'm in the twilight zone?
I always feel like
Somebody's watching me
And I have no privacy.
Whoooa, oh-oh.
I always feel like
Somebody's watching me.
Who's playin' tricks on me?
Kenneth Gordy, a.k.a. Rockwell -- son of Motown Records founder Berry Gordy -- sang those lyrics (with accompaniment by none other than Michael Jackson) back in the 1980s with his one-hit wonder "Somebody's Watching Me." The song was all about the paranoia that accompanies fame, but it's also an appropriate theme song for Harold Crick.
An unassuming and some might say nerdy IRS auditor, he lives his own average life that suddenly turns into a version of The Twilight Zone when one day he begins hearing a voice narrating his life. He's unnerved but not quite yet freaked out by hit. That is, until he hears her mention his imminent death. Accordingly, and having had his life brightened by a bohemian bakery shop owner he's auditing, Harold sets out to find the person behind the voice before it's too late.
That's the imaginative setup for "Stranger Than Fiction," a work the sounds as if might have been thought up by the reality-bending mind of Charlie Kaufman (who's delivered enjoyably heady flicks such as "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation" to the masses). This one certainly has all of the requisite elements -- a fun premise, sharp dialogue, and a name cast -- yet it never quite transcends from entertaining and amusing to creative brilliance.
It's certainly easy enough to sit through, but it could and should have been so much more, particularly in regards to what screenwriter Zach Helm (making his debut) and director Marc Forster ("Finding Neverland," "Monster's Ball") do with the premise once it's established.
Being a former aspiring screenwriter, it's frustrating to watch good material get shortchanged, especially when the basic story isn't exactly original (in terms of never having been done before in this or other mediums). As I learned long ago, you can write about anything you want and create any sort of characters and setting as long as you get the reader or audience to buy into it fully. And the most important aspect of that is setting up the rules of whatever universe you've created.
Here, the filmmakers establish Will Ferrell as the IRS employee (where he thankfully underplays the role without any sort of manic, no holds barred mannerisms) who can hear Emma Thompson's voice narrating his life, or at least just parts of it. Thus, we quickly learn that he's actually the protagonist in her latest work, with Dustin Hoffman's literary professor character informing Crick that she always kills off her main characters. He also assumes that Harold doesn't always hear Kay's narration because she's working on some other part of the novel (at those times) that doesn't involve him.
That's all fine and dandy, and it plays into the film's theme of exploring free will. One assumes he has that to some degree when she's not narrating his life, and the fact that he's just a literary character formally constrained by plot rules might explain why Ferrell doesn't exactly have him react believably upon first hearing the narrator's voice. But he also exercises more of that free will notion when he starts to break out of his rut -- supposedly created by her structuring of his life in her work -- by seeing and falling for the free spirited, bohemian baker shop owner played by Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Yet, while watching all of that unfold, various questions and related thoughts kept taking me out of the proceedings. For example, is everyone and everything in Harold's world a creation of Kay's imagination? One would assume not since Ferrell and Hoffman's characters become aware of her as a novelist in their world, so unless she's writing her story about her character becoming aware that he's a character in her story, it would seem that only Harold is her creation. Which leads to the question of how he became a physical manifestation in the real world and so on.
I know, it's designed to be a turn off your brain and come along for the ride sort of tale, but those questions and thoughts of what could have been done with the material served as a constant distraction for yours truly. Since she's not consciously aware that she's controlling his life (at least until the end), the filmmakers could have had a blast with her unknowingly screwing with his life by constantly writing and re-writing his dialogue or behavior.
That might have led to some hilarious set pieces of him on a date, at work, etc. with others around him thinking he's gone a bit loopy as he constantly changes his tune, repeats what he's said or done, or simply freezes in mid-sentence when she stops for a writing break, etc. Forster and company could have then played even more with that, such as having Harold coming to realize that's what's happening and thus trying to stop that, even going so far as to be the cause of her writer's block.
The latter does exist here with the novelist being stuck while trying to imagine any number of ways to kill off her protagonist, all of which are visualized with her in that role. Nevertheless, it probably would have been better to have the author and her creation get into a battle of wills where each tries to sabotage the other. That could have ranged from her directly writing obstacles (to impeded his "disobedience") to her drinking or doing other mind and/or body relaxing things that would then have led to Harold experiencing the same in his world, such as being pulled over for drunk driving when not having touched a drop.
The fact that the myriad possibilities are seemingly endless and constrained only by one's imagination makes one wonder why the filmmakers didn't have more fun and/or be more creative with their tale. Perhaps if Kaufman had gotten his hands on the material, if could have turned out that way. As it stands, "Stranger Than Fiction" is an entertaining enough diversion to rate as a 6 out of 10, but it nearly feels as if it's an abridged rather than full version of the film that it could have been.
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