Stranger Than Fiction

Will Ferrell's dramatic abilities are not exactly impressive. Despite a general critical attitude of mild acceptance of the inevitable fact that the actor can pull off a character that doesn't fit into the SNL worldview (one which Ferrell has arguably been integral in creating), essentially the performance was not the breakthrough some may have imagined. Ferrell's Harold Crick was seething on the verge of a breakdown from the start, and not intentionally. Those beady eyes of his, like a shark's, scanning the murkiness around him, ready to attack any and every comic opportunity, in the end gave him away. Ferrell didn't leave his improvisational genius at the arthouse doorstep on this one, nearly cracking after each successive straightman (honestly, isn't everyone a straightman when appearing with Will Ferrell?) offered up a tasty bit of comic set-up, only to cringe as his line-reading super-ego kicked in. "Talladega Nights" was sillier, stupider, and a lot easier to digest, but man, did it have a vitality and energy that Stranger Than Fiction could never rival. Only one scene breathed with any kind of life. Harold and Ana sit in the bus while the camera follows, um, actually it was hard to tell because the hinge in the big, two-part city bus keeps doing its thing. Eyelines are skewed, the camera gets confused, and it's as if Fellini stopped in as guest director for the afternoon. It's really fun.

Ana, as a character, is the worst kind of scriptwriting shortcut. Boy meets girl, boy must get over individual problem to get girl, boy gets girl. I don't want to call it insensitivity, but I wouldn't want to be a woman watching this film. She isn't even given a chance to decide whether she likes him. It's written in. If, as most of its champions will argue, the essence of the film is the simple love story, then it's a pretty one-sided story. The story is about Harold Crick, and all the other characters, including Ana, are foils, incapable of individuality. Perhaps director Marc Forster's take on contemporary fiction is exactly this. Sometimes singularity must be re-examined in the name of a more complex, humanistic story.

I think that's what left me wanting more from Stranger Than Fiction. The love story left me unsatisfied, it just felt a little too easy, and the concept of the story within the story didn't really point any fingers or take any particular stance. I can really only speculate as to Forster's take on fiction as a theme.

Little Miss Sunshine Was Stupid

This was a boring short-cut of a movie that front-loaded its story with a few nasty issues, dicked around for the entire second act with only one good scene where Steve Carell's Frank gets spotted buying porno magazines, and by the finale, completely blew apart any kind of intelligent resolutions that could have been made. Meanwhile this family unfairly has every bit of script-trickery bad luck thrown at them. The kid finds out he's color blind or something and can't get into the army (Oh kid, your dreams are shot down? That happens all the time, to every kid, once a week. I remember a particular Jimmy Page and Robert Plant reunion my dad wouldn't let me go to when I was 13. Devastating). How does this justify an ending? All other issues are left untouched other than to insinuate that wallowing in your own misery is somehow essential in life. Another determinist piece of garbage that's only bringing us down as humans.

But I had to say something, because the asshole responsible for this thing just won an Oscar. But here's proof that these people need to get out of Hollywood before the whole place implodes on itself. This was said of the writer's nomination:

"To write this script, Michael Arndt [Little Miss Sunshine] had to quit his job as personal assistant to Matthew Broderick."