Stranger Than Fiction

Harold Crick is a lonely IRS agent whose mundane existence is transformed when he hears a mysterious voice narrating his life.

Stranger Than Fiction earned mostly favorable but not universal notices, with critics generally charmed by its high-concept premise and unusually restrained Will Ferrell — though the middling aggregate scores suggest a portion of reviewers found it too precious or too mild to fully deliver on its ambitions. The biggest point of contention is tone: whether the film wisely resists turning its meta-narrative hook into farce, or whether that restraint drains it of the sharpness the premise promises.