Stranger Than Fiction is a story of an IRS Auditor Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) who finds himself, the subject of a narration that only he can hear.

Harold Crick lives a very boring and mundane life. His entire world revolves around numbers. How many times he brushes each of his 32 teeth. How many steps it takes to get to the bus stop. The time in which he goes to bed, and the time that he wakes up every morning. By tying his tie a different way on certain days of the week, he knows that he can save 45 seconds on those days. One day though, while brushing his teeth, his whole life begins to change as he hears the narration of his daily, unexciting life. He starts to think he is going crazy, and goes to visit a psychiatrist, but then he realizes that the voice isn’t telling him to do things, but actually narrating things he has already done “with a much better vocabulary” than he himself has. The voice that he hears is more a nuisance at first and he does his best to live with it, until he hears one day while waiting at the bus stop, that a tiny little action that has already transpired will ultimately lead to his untimely death. This is when Harold meets with Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman). He is a literature professor who works with Crick to help him find out who the author is, that might be narrating his life. We find out that the author is Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) who hasn’t written a book in 10 years. She always writes tragedy’s where the hero of her story dies at the end. Kay is trying to find a way to kill off the main character of her new book, Harold Crick. Little does she know that Harold actually exists, and is hearing her thoughts as she writes them in her book.

Harold’s entire world turns upside down. From his work, to his love life, everything begins to change for him as he desperately tries to avoid the death that is being written about him.

Stranger than Fiction is a smart comedy, and a fantastic story, with an even better cast. It’s a story that tells us how much we need to appreciate life. If the quality of that life is not so good, then do everything you can to change it. It was directed Marc Forster who brought us such movies as Monsters Ball, and Finding Neverland and this may just be his next film to get the Best Picture nod. Emma Thompson should find herself in the academy award race early next year as well, and to date, this is Will Ferrell’s most moving performance. Dustin Hoffman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal were also brilliant. By far one of my favorite movies of 2006. I recommend this movie to everyone. You will laugh, you will cry, and then you will laugh some more.