Critic Reviews
67
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
29(83%)
mixed
5(14%)
negative
1(3%)
Showing 35 Critic Reviews
91
In a feat of performing imagination, Ferrell turns his usual extroversion inside out and his usual zaniness into precision, and makes it all work for him.
88
Stranger than Fiction is a wonderful cinematic experience - a welcome way to spend a chilly autumn evening.
88
Stranger Than Fiction is slicker than Kaufman's work - and Forster's direction is certainly more studio-ish than Kaufman collaborators Spike Jonze's or Michel Gondry's. But it's a clever idea, and you feel a little smarter watching the thing unfurl.
88
What a thoughtful film this is, and how thought-stirring. Marc Forster's Stranger Than Fiction comes advertised as a romance, a comedy, a fantasy, and it is a little of all three, but it's really a fable, a "moral tale."
83
Maybe the best thing about Stranger Than Fiction is the way it extracts unexpected work from underrated actors.
80
It might be Charlie Kaufman lite, but this is a great date movie for the discerning -- smart, ingenious and heartwarming.
75
When Ferrell and Hoffman do their thing together, a charming bit of whimsy becomes something more. It becomes really, really funny.
75
This is a Ferrell you've never seen before, nailing a role that calls for breakneck humor in the final race against the clock and touching gravity in the love scenes with Gyllenhaal.
75
Amid all this metafictional hoopla lies the real heart of the movie, a tentative romance between Ferrell and a tax-withholding baker played with adorable prickliness by Maggie Gyllenhaal.
75
It has a nifty premise and outstanding performances from Ferrell, as the protagonist-in-progress, and Emma Thompson, as his blocked creator.
