Stranger than Fiction

Stranger than Fiction
I haven’t posted any movie reviews here lately because nothing that I have seen of late has been good enough to warrant writing about. Since I last wrote about movies — which, looking back, seems to have been in August of last year — I have seen some bad movies and some not bad movies. But nothing has been either bad enough to make me feel like I need to warn people away, or good enough to send me into evangelical mode.

Today, I am happy to report that I have found a good movie. I feel strongly enough about this movie to take time out of my lazy holiday Monday to tell you to go rent it. The acting is good, the writing is good, even the soundtrack is well-integrated into the movie, with well-chosen musical interludes. The movie I am talking about is Stranger than Fiction with an incredibly sedate Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson, who I find captivating. It got a user rating of 7.9 out of 10 among 40,685 IMDB members and even though that is quite high, in my opinion it is not high enough.

Now comes the part about managing expectations. I often find that when a movie has been highly recommended to me by one of my friends I am almost guaranteed to come away from watching it thinking, “meh”. So, in the interest of giving you some small chance of enjoying this movie as much as I did, I will say that it is not for everyone. There are no fight scenes, no car chases, and not a lot of skin is shown. The pacing is slow and the plot is very much character driven. This is not the kind of movie you would wait in line at 6am to get tickets to the opening show for. It is more the kind of thing that you would watch on a weekend afternoon, once you have finished your chores and just before you start to think about what to make (or buy) for supper.

Have I managed to talk the movie up and down enough to get you interested, but not that excited? I sure hope so. If you do end up watching it, please let me know if I was right to lead you to it.