Review: Stranger Than Fiction
Penguin November 20th, 2006
Rating: 4/5 stars
We’ve been installing new doors and windows in the house. The stain fumes were starting to get to me so I did everything I could to get out of the house. We decided to go see Stranger Than Fiction, the relatively new Will Farrel movie.
I had already heard good things about the movie, but there were a few pleasant surprises. The movie opened with CG overlays of Harold’s (Will Farrel) thoughts. They worked really well in terms of showing what was going on in the character’s head and made, what would have been mundane tasks, interesting.
The story is really cute and playful. Despite there not being a lot of tension, it was still riveting and interesting. Although Harold, as a character, is pretty much uninteresting, that’s what makes his circumstances so interesting. The narration of his life drives him to change and forces all to ask the question: what would we do if we knew we were going to die? Not a profound question, but it works very well in this context.
One of the best things about the movie was visual queues and dramatic irony. I think I was the only person in the theatre (1 of 6) that actually found these images amusing. Either the rest of the meager audience totally missed them, or they just didn’t find them as amusing as I did. Example: There’s this one scene towards the climax where Harold is running towards a bank of phones. Above him is a sign that says “this way out”. Had it only happened once, I would think it was coincidence. But the frequency leads me to believe that it was purposeful.
Watching it from the perspective of a writer, it got me thinking about my own writing. This past Sunday, I came face to face with just how awful some of it could be. I need to work on my writing, my characters, and my plots.
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