Who woulda thunk it - Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffmann and Queen Latifah in a movie together. A good movie. A really really good movie.
Will Ferrell is Harold Crick, an auditor for the IRS (taxman!). Emma Thompson is a writer with writers block who is trying to work out how to kill her main character, Harold Crick. Harold is a real person and can hear her narration in his head. Dustin Hoffmann is the literary professor he consults to try to work out this little....problem.
The concept of this movie does not really ask for real life belief. It asks for a temporary suspension of disbelief, and delivers the material to allow it. Dustin Hoffmann's character is really at the heart of this movie, and the musings he delivers on literary conventions in order to get the core of the issue really tie the movie together. The interplay of the conventions with the film making conventions used in the film are clever, hilarious and suitably understated.
Will Ferrell gives the performance of his career thus far, and even his tender fascination with the anarchist baker (yes, an anarchist baker) played by Maggie Gyllenhaall is sweet and just lovely to watch. Emma Thompson is as always, sublime (lady crush alert). Maggie Gyllenhaal will win an Oscar one day - she is destined for great things and a pleasure to watch. Queen Latifah once again proves she is serious about her acting, and Dustin Hoffmann in my opinion completes the film.
And to top it off, it was riddled with one liners. I am never above one liners.
Fantastic - 9.5.
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4 comments:
TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNN! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
At Kat's request, the email I sent her and Dave today on my lunch break:
O. M. G. I loved it so much. Definitely a 10. Even though both of you totally loved it, it still exceeded my expectations (high, high expectations). Will Ferrell broke my heart, then mended it again and again with his flour-buying adorableness. OK, will try and get coherent and tell you the things I loved about it.
1. No one overplayed. In a movie where eccentricities abounded, everyone was terribly matter-of-fact about it. This is a miracle, given that the larger supporting roles - Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah - were all filled by big personalities with major chops, who no doubt spend lots of time looking around for projects where they can cut loose a la Meet the Parents 2. They were great.
2. Little hilarities. Dustin Hoffman, telling Will Ferrell he was busy because he had five classes to teach and the faculty pool to lifeguard. A throwaway joke? No! He actually was a lifeguard at the pool! Dustin Hoffman in a three piece suit, sitting talking to Ferrell, crosses his legs and he's completely barefoot.
3. Literary references. Hoffman ruling out Frankenstein and Miss Marple, then asking if he was the Troll King!! In a subterranean kingdom beneath his floorboards!!! Hah!! I think there was even a Lord of the Rings reference, but it was hard to tell because Hoffman pronounced it "Go-lum" rather than "Goll-um". Hmm.
4. The architecture. Whichever city they shot that in, those apartments and the university buildings were all really well and symbolically chosen. How great.
5. The scene where Hoffman, after reading the manuscript all night, tells Ferrell that he must die in order to serve the story. That was beautiful.
6. Maggie Gyllenhal, and the bakery with the giant chocolate cupcake sign. And that first visit there with the Comedy vs Tragedy notebook.
7. Sharing Ferrell's resignation to his fate, then being completely overjoyed with the ending. Generically, really, the story should not have had a happy ending. But that was one of the statements the film had to make - that death is the only certainty in life, but that how you live your life is completely of your own making (ref. point 11). And what a great, non-cliche way to deliver such a message.
8. The bendy-bus scene. How awesome. Thimbles and socialist literature, heh.
9. Emma Thompson's gorgeous remorse about killing characters, and the impact it had on her as an author and a person. She was heartbroken when Ferrell brought back the manuscript and said he was okay with dying. This is a well-documented peril of authorship, investing in the lives of characters to a point where grief must result(http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/02/06/books.rowling.ap/index.html).
10. The debate at the end between Hoffman and Thompson, over her altering her masterwork for the sake of one life. Can authors really ever know how their work will resonate through time? Would authorial (or political, or sporting, or whatever) immortality be purchased for one single human life?
11. The implication of author-as-God. If God exists, is this how it works? Does he/she plot things for the sake of poetry and irony (surely sometimes it must seem so), and does he/she derive the same grim pleasure that Thompson did? Can God's mind be changed? How does "God" really shape our lives - as an omniscient narrator, simply knowing every action you take, or as the scripter himself, while we unwittingly assume free will is ours?
I went to see it with my brother, who I was worried wouldn't like it, and he surprised me by really loving it as well. Although, we had our post-movie buzz ruined by some stupid pensioner who overheard us gushing about the movie on the way out. She hopped on behind us on the escalator and asked if we'd liked it. We replied in the affirmative. She said "Oh" and, sucker that I am, said, "And I take it you didn't?" She said that it wasn't what she had expected and that she didn't like it. At which point of course, Rhys and I sneered at her and stalked off. How dare she!! How dare she be stupid enough not to be able to read a twenty-word blurb about a movie before seeing it. She deserves our contempt and pity. Maybe just contempt.
I loved this movie. Loved it. 9.5 for me also. I really want a list of the questions that Dustin Hoffman asks Will Farrell to determine what sort of narrative he is living in.
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