This quirky movie was by far my favorite out of all the films produced in the year 2006. Perhaps it’s because I’m an author, but I completely related to the story.
Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) works for the IRS, doing audits. He has a bit of an OCD about his routines, from getting ready in the morning to keeping the exact time on his watch. He’s single and has no one to distract him from his patterns. Until one morning, that is, when he starts to hear a woman’s voice narrating everything he does. At first, the voice just says what he is already doing, but soon it’s skipping ahead slightly, and he finds himself doing what the voice says, which leads him down paths he wouldn’t have ordinarily taken.
One of those paths leads to Anna Pascal, owner of the bakery he’s been assigned to audit. Anna (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is a free spirit who never has paid taxes and dislikes the idea of having to start. “The voice” tells Harold to check her out, which he does, and gets in a little trouble for it, but he and Anna soon start up a friendship that blooms into romance.
As the movie progresses, we meet Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) a bestselling novelist, and we discover that for whatever reason, Harold is a character in her book, even though he’s very much alive. The voice he hears is her narrative voice—but there’s a problem. She’s planning to kill him off by the end of the book.
Through a strange set of events, the two of them meet, and Karen is faced with a huge dilemma. Her character, Harold, must die in order for the book to have any meaning, but now that she’s met the real Harold, how can she consign him to such a fate? The agonies she goes through are so poignant, I was deeply moved. Where is the line between life and art, really? And what are we willing to sacrifice in the name of art?
This film does contain some language and a mild bed scene, although nothing that offended me. I truly do consider it one of the best movies to come out of Hollywood for some time. Rated PG-13.
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