Más extraño que la ficción

Stranger than Fiction is a fresh, inspiring and on-point comedy for an intelligent audience. It offers a deluge of great ideas and cute moments we know from real life but have never seen in a movie. Will Ferrell’s serious acting is a bit too minimalist, but he has great help in the form of the eccentric performances by Maggie Gyllenhaal and Dustin Hoffman. I recommend taking a cookie with delicious chocolate icing to the cinema with you. (26.03.2007)

Although I have quite a soft spot for Ferrell's frat pack rampage, his focused and artful creation is what most pleasantly took my breath away. However, it wouldn't have happened without the great script that even Charlie Kaufmann would have been proud of, and Forster's fantasizing, which managed to make even brushing his teeth an unforgettable experience... or: Shout out to Hollywood! Originality can still be found in a few drawers! (03.05.2008)

Creator-chameleon Marc Foster has again chosen a subject that we wouldn’t expect from him - a variation on The Truman Show. And, as usual, he filmed an outstanding picture that is like all of his previous ones, although it trips up a little with the not completely kosher ending. However, this time this comes after such a gush of originality, playful narrative techniques, disarming ideas and visual tricks that it doesn’t really matter. Everything here is like clockwork - the actors is outstanding, the screenplay too and if you add to this the sure-handed and ingenious directing, it’s hard not to fall in love with this story about this boring guy, Harold Crick. Despite the ending which I would have preferred if it had come a few minutes sooner. (25.07.2007)

One of my greatest film experiences of the past year, with excellent acting and a top-notch original screenplay. It is a film about fate, about dying, and about love for life, but presented in a comedic form. The acclaimed writer, who reflects her constant depression and suicidal tendencies in tragic novels, where she ruthlessly destroys her fictional characters, has no idea that her latest protagonist, a dry tax official without imagination, has a real-life image and, by a twist of fate, the writer begins to control his future from above. However, her protagonist hears the story of his life, realizes that his perspective is probably not very joyful, and tries to defy his fate. Forster's movie is full of absurd dialogues, clever directing elements, and truly black humor. Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal are very good in the lead roles, but the biggest star is Emma Thompson as the British writer. The scene where she goes to the hospital for inspiration on how to send off her fictional character from the world, and is dissatisfied because she sees many seriously ill people but none of whom are dying, and she pesters the staff to show her someone about to die, represents, in a way, the pinnacle of how far you can go in terms of black humor in a mainstream film. Stranger Than Fiction is a film based on the game between the individual characters and between the director and the screenwriter on one side, and its audience on the other. A clever piece that doesn't come around often. Overall impression: 95%. (29.12.2009)

"An amazing film," were the words with which D. Moore began his 751st review, as he was delighted to see Will Ferrell finally star in a well-written and directed film, even alongside Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, and would have gone on to praise him even further, but he had to do the urgent business of finding out who the idiot scribbler was who was putting together his own story, and beating out of him the one sensible reason why he was constantly forced to use tiresome, overlong sentences. (20.05.2011)

Just as the current trend in comedies is to showcase the enlightening transformation of an cold office fish into a human being and throw in some chick as a bonus, so Stranger Than Fiction reeks of a spasmodic attempt to define itself against that type of comedy, even though the basic synopsis is the same. Indeed – a bored guy with a face, Will Ferrell, working in the IRS and having no contact with anyone picks up a tattooed, impulsive, left-wing baker, Maggie Gyllenhaal. How many times have we seen this – Fight Club, Yes Man, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Wanted,... Which sucks, because the main idea of blending a literary with a real character is actually a promising one, and the film is even funny and endearing at a few moments. Unfortunately, though, it somehow doesn't bring anything new to the table. (25.08.2010)

I like stories where the stories themselves play the main role. Here, reality is wonderfully merged with novelistic reality. Will Ferrell is absolutely unreal, and I constantly regret that he doesn't make more films like this and that he is so focused on crazy comedies. The cast in this film, however, is generally fantastic. Touching, but not too much, romantic, but not too much, dramatic, but just right. Maybe only the ending could have been different. But in general, you usually have a feeling of resonance with the movie. (23.03.2014)

Another great piece of work by Marc Forster. While Stranger Than Fiction is very bitter and sad at times, the overall craft and especially the incredible sense of direction and storytelling are so amazing that by the finale it’s sure to move everyone to tears. It's about how a completely ordinary life can be changed by a very small thing, about how love enters a "boring" life and brings with it the desire to live again, and to the fullest... That's what this beautiful film is about. (25.07.2009)