A very interesting movie!
I was very impressed with the cast: Will Ferrell as Harold Crick (the main character of the movie, a "boring" tax agent working for IRS); Emma Thompson as Karen Eiffel, the famous author who always killed her main character, in this case, her imagined Harold Crick; Dustin Hoffman as Prof Hilbert, whom Harold Crick came to consult, hoping to be saved from being "killed"; Queen Latifah as a literature agent who was sent to help Karen Eiffel finishing her book on time; etc.
The plot was real strange, but was performed and shown brilliantly in this movie. The result was something real tragic plus funny (try to imagine such a combination!).
The story was about a boring Harold Crick, who lived his life in a monotone manner since the time his wife left him for someone else. Every day, he would do exactly the same things (almost) as the last, especially in regards of his routines: from waking up, brushing teeth, to taking the bus to work, etc.
(Will Ferrel was quite cute in a "dumb" way in this movie. One can not feel pity for him, because of the way he lived his life, when he looked so manly and quite adorable).
Things changed suddenly, when one morning, while he was brushing teeth and counting the brushstrokes as he often did, he thought he heard someone's voice narrating all of his routine activities. The odd thing about it was, the narrating was precisely about him, even his own name.
Then he heard the verse, a bit like, "little did he know, he was about to die a sudden death". That shocked him a bit.
The narrating voice kept drone on, and things kept happening around him in the exact manner of what the voice said. In fright, he decided to consult Professor Hilbert, who was quite famous in liturature field.
At the same time with the happening of these events, he was sent out to "edit" a baker, who had not pay tax properly as she should. This baker happened to be very attractive, with an attitude (which I thought was a bit overboard! Maggie Gyllenhaal played Ana Pascal. A pity that she sounded too sour, too sleazy, too unlovable here...). Harold promptly felt attracted to her, but being a serious and "boring" type, he did not know how to express his feeling.
Decided to live his life as if he was about to die (as advised by Prof Hilbert), our Harold went out buying himself an electric guitar. With his beautiful singing and guitar playing (did he really sing that, for the voice there was quite good!), he managed to charm our harden hearted baker wonderfully.
By chance, he found out who the narrator of his current life was, and decided to beg her to let him live. Emma Thompson was real brilliant in this role. I was so impressed with her acting from beginning to end (funny thing was, I did not recognise her as the same lady in Sense and Sensibility, 1995; or Nanny McPhee, 2005; etc. until I saw it in the credits).
Perhaps Emma Thompson's brilliant acting was highlighted by the presence of the charming and with very high sense of humour actress, Queen Latifah?
The humorous and very tragic ending of the movie was: Harold should resign to his fate, to be killed, because otherwise, it would mean spoiling a good ending of a long awaited novel by famous author Karen Eiffel. (The verdict from Prof Hilbert). Harold read the draft novel, and decided that the ending of the draft was too good to be changed, in which Harold Crick would be killed while trying to save a little boy from being crushed by a bus.
Resigned to his fate, he was really hit instead by the bus and proclaimed dead by others.
Fortunately for Harold, the writer Karen Eiffel when realised that her book was truly linked somehow with the real Harold Crick, a truly good man (even though he was a tax man, who worked for IRS), decided to let him survived the crash after all.
A very strange and touching movie, one that could make one smiled at time. Good music, good cast, interesting plot, what else could one hope for?
