Movies

STRANGER THAN FICTION

Me and the Sup spent yesterday doing girl stuff (mall surfing, movies and lunch), in celebration of 76 years married to one another.  We don't go to many movies, mostly because I feel like I'm giving succor to the enemy; the Sup is not quite so over the edge.  She loved "Stranger Than Fiction" (think Delirious meets Groundhog Day without the humor - Ebert calls it a "moral tale").  Me?  Not so much.  There were several moments in the movie that broke my reverie. First, this Will Farrell (Bill Murray, where were you?) vehicle is not a comedy, so there may be disappointment for some on that score. He plays Harold Crick,  a senior  IRS auditor (stomach roll), painfully addicted to routine.  Crick audits Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who runs a very upscale looking bakery shop, and whose only clientèle seem to be bums she feeds for free (stomach).  Somehow she made enough profit to intentionally deduct 28.62% - or some such - from her taxes, because (I bet you can't guess) she won't support America's evil military complex.  Just once I'd like to see a Hollywood character say "I feel honored to pay for the protection from outside enemies, but I'm damned sick of boondoggles like overfunded education, and under subscribed entitlement programs for every constituency."  Just once.  Still, Gyllenhaal is a compellingly pretty woman.  I Googled her visage to see if her half body tattoo was real.  It isn't.  Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) is an author writing a novel about Crick (whom she believes to be her invention), but Crick can hear her thoughts as she writes about him.  She experiences writer's block when it comes to killing her hero, and the real Crick is panic stricken, since everything else she wrote about him happened. Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams, Queen Latifah, Tom Hulce, and Linda Hunt also have roles.  I give it 5 BOOGERS®.  The gratuitous lefty messages annoyed me.  In one scene Crick is watching television.  The decision was made to use this opportunity to sermonize on the evils of using monkeys for lab experiments and cosmetic testing.  It  distracted me;  the Sup didn't notice.  Finally, the entire premise hinges on how Harold is finally killed.  Kay Eiffel's solution, we are led to believe, is so stunningly wonderful that even Harold agrees to die so that the world can enjoy the magnificence of this milestone novel.  Problem is, that ending is  utterly pedestrian.  Like I said, Mother Superior just loved it, and that's all that really counted.  We had fun afterwards, with lunch - and spending a good deal of time in the bookstore's easy chair (me), sipping Cappuccino while reading "Movable Type for Dummies."  I didn't understand it.