I cannot say that I heard too much about this movie when it hit the theaters; also the DVD-release seems to have come rather quickly. If this is a sign for this movie to have been a “bomb”, this judgment is completely and entirely undeserved.
While Will Ferrell played a few annoying - yet sometimes funny - characters in recent releases (Anchorman, Talladega Nights), he gives a lot of depth to Harold Crick and delivers an outstanding performance. Maggie Gyllenhaal also performs incredibly well and one would like to believe that she is playing out her real self. Dustin Hoffman adds some dry comic relief to the actually sad story.
As an admirer of “Back to the Future” I am a big fan of parallel-universe ideas; “Stranger than Fiction” feeds off of this idea and gives it a new spin. To prevent the danger of giving away too much - after all, this movie gives the viewer a lot of twists and turns - I will keep this short and conclude with
4 out of 5 wrist watches