Stranger than Fiction

The second-run theater around the corner (tickets just 2,99 € per person) was showing Stranger than Fiction this past week. I had heard something vague about the film, and at this price, if I don't like it I can leave.

The place was packed.

And good reason, too, it was a great film! A tax auditor for the IRS is hearing voices - describing him, and what he does. He counts a lot, for example. He calculates minimal paths from point A to point B. He can do math fast in his head. (Oooh, I know the feeling, the first two I also do, constantly).

He falls madly in love with the young lady running a bakery that he is supposed to be auditing. And he hears these voices, finally realizing that he is a character in the novel of a writer with writer's block. She wants to kill him off and finish the book, but can't see how to do it.

She eventually hits on something, he finds out, gets contact with her with the help of Dustin Hoffman as a literature-professor-and-life-guard, pleads for a different ending with a happier end, and so it goes.

The fx (often depicting the calculations he is doing in his head) are just marvelous. The love story is sweet (they eventually get each other), and the story ending kind of corny, but in all it was very amusing and well worth the price.