9. Stranger Than Fiction

Release Date: November 10, 2006

Director: Marc Forster

Non Will Ferrell Cast Members: Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah.

First Time I Saw It: In theaters during my peak Ferrell period when my mom, my best friend and I mostly spoke to each other in quotes from his movies. I didn’t see it with them, though, because it came out during my first year of college and just writing that gives me heart palpitations.

Why I Love It: Because it’s a movie about storytelling that’s also a really good story. While the conceit of a normal guy hearing a narrator in his head could go really broad, the film is subdued, smart and intimate instead. The story is meticulously written, as well-planned as Harold’s days. What sells the concept, though, are the characters and the stellar group of actors who give them life. Each plays their parts with just the right level or quirk while still making them seem real and complex. Hoffman is sharp and funny as a professor of literature helping Harold find out what kind of story he’s living. Thompson plays the unwitting author of Harold’s story, Karen Eiffel, with a subtlety that makes you wonder if her character just has a morbid fascination with death or is actually suicidal. Gyllenhaal Ana is sexy and fierce as the object of Harold’s affection, bakery owner Ana. Ferrell, however, is the standout. He manages to make you laugh at how ridiculous Harold’s life while also making you fall in love with how pathetic and clueless he is. By the end of it, the last thing you want is for this good, sweet man to die and if that’s not a sign of a good story, then what is?

Signature Ferrell Moment: This movie has Ferrell in a more introspective mode, but he still has tons of really funny moments. The romantic in me wants to choose the scene when he shows up at Ana’s bakery just as she’s closing up to bring her “flours.” It’s sweet and clever and it makes my cynical heart melt just as much as it does Anna’s. But if I have to choose the part that makes me laugh the most, it comes much earlier in their courtship, when Anna gets onto the same bus Harold is riding and they share some wonderfully adversarial banter. It’s not so much what they say as the fact that Harold is sitting in the worst seat on the bus–the one at the junction of those giant combo buses that has the corrugated bending walls–and he keeps gliding back and forth in the frame as the bus moves. The characters just talk like it’s not the most ridiculous thing in the world and while Ana probably realizes how silly it is, Harold doesn’t and it’s all the more hilarious as a result. –Marisa Carpico

https://youtu.be/_ZZHtVSOHRA

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