Stranger than Fiction

Unsatisfying is the only word that comes to mind when I think about how to describe this movie. It has some nice touches, but not enough to warrant calling it "uncommonly intelligent" (Roger Ebert). It also makes use of some visual and plot devices that ultimately add nothing to the content and only serve to fill up air time. Will Ferrell never takes it over the top, to his credit. And I like how detached the academic is (played by Dustin Hoffman) when he talks about literature. The writer (Emma Thompson) starts out the same way, talking about literature with detachment as though it has no emotional content or consequence and is simply a technical exercise (one that requires expertise, but is still a technical skill). Harold (Ferrell's character) has a crush on a woman who owns a bakery, and he shows up at her store with an assortment of flours. That was nicely expressed, and seemed true to how the characters would express themselves (i.e. it wasn't cute for the sake of being cute).

However the film has these quirky little graphics, ostensibly to show how Harold compulsively counts and sees spatial relationships. But they add nothing and are often distracting. Queen Latifah's character is entirely unnecessary. She's fine in the role, but none of the scenes with her character serve any purpose. The story doesn't hold much interest, and the dialog is mostly empty. Scenes intended to denote the passage of time or to express existential anxiety seem to have come from a template; they all seem pat.

A O Scott (NYTimes) puts it well, namely that there is "something soft and unfinished about the movie; it wanders about in its own conceit, collecting stray moments of intelligence or feeling without adding up to very much." not unlike the Andy Kauffman films, which seem to have inspired the style of this movie, but which, despite having even more conceit, also have a lot more content than this one.