A reality-bending comedy in the mold of Being John Malkovich, Marc Forster's Stranger than Fiction does something quite remarkable: It gives Will Ferrell the least annoying character he's ever played on film. The Saturday Night Live alumnus here portrays Internal Revenue Service functionary Harold Crick, whose solitary and desperately dull existence is interrupted one day by the sound of a voice talking about his life as though it were part of a story. And indeed it is. Eccentric novelist Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) is struggling to complete her latest book, and Harold has become her protagonist. When, in a bit of foreshadowing, she writes that he will soon be dead, Harold understandably freaks out. He undertakes a race against time to find the author before she can create the fatal scene, and in the process he becomes more attuned to life and its endless possibilities. Ferrell plays this role with deadpan earnestness, and under Forster's direction he turns in a carefully modulated performance. Thompson is marvelously dotty as the writer, and Dustin Hoffman and Maggie Gyllenhaal lend strong support as a professor of literature and Harold’s girlfriend, respectively. The script by Zach Helm, clearly influenced by the work of Charlie Kaufman, never really tries to address its inherent ridiculousness, but ultimately that doesn't matter. It's a clever piece of work, exceptionally well interpreted by Forster.