There are some members of my family that are HUGE Will Ferrell fans. My sister named her feral kitten Willy (feral-ferrell, get it?), and one of my husband's favorite movies is Elf. I have been forced to sit through several bad Ferrell movies such as Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgandy, (although that did have its moments. I LOVED the "Afternoon Delight" scene and video) and Bewitched (a thoroughly wretched movie). I thought Elf was tolerable, and liked his role in The Producers (although I didn't like that move as much as I thought I would). Surprisingly, I have actually wanted to see two recent Will Ferrell movies, and so we queued up Stranger than Fiction from Netflix, and went to see Blades of Glory in the movie theater. Even more surprisingly, I really liked both of these movies.
For those of you who haven't seen it, Stranger than Fiction is the movie where Ferrell steps out of the larger-than-life role he usually plays, such as Buddy in Elf or Ricky Bobby in Talledaga Nights (which I haven't seen, but can pretty much imagine from the descriptions I have seen). Some people can try to say that he tried a role like this before when he was in that movie about the kid's soccer team, but that movie was so horrible I didn't even finish it, and can't even remember the name of it. (I just looked it up and it was called "Kicking and Screaming").
The premise of Stranger than Fiction is a novel (hee) one. Novelist Karen Eiffel (played wonderfully be Emma Thompson), has been suffering from writer's block these past 10 years, while trying to write her latest book. It is a story about IRS agent Harold Crick, and his sad, lonely life. It is a story about how he meets a sweet young baker who only pays the part of her taxes that goes to the parts of the government she actually supports, falls in love, and then dies in a tragic accident. This isn't spoilery since it was in all of the promos. All of Eiffel's books end with the hero dying tragically.
The catch this time is that Harold Crick is a real man, who can hear Karen narrating his life in his head. When he hears he will die, he of course tries to figure out who the narrator, so goes and sees a professor of literature at the local University, played by Dustin Hoffman. The cast is rounded out with Queen Latifah as Karen's assistant Penny Escher, and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Ana Pascal, Harold's bakery owning love interest.
I won't go into any more detail, but go and rent this movie. Ferrell proved that he can act, not just play an over-the-top character. It is brilliant!
My husband was surprised that I wanted to see Blades of Glory. I don't usually go for that type of movie, but I have a soft spot for Jon Heder, of Napoleon Dynamite fame. What a fun movie! The premise, such as it is, is that Heder and Ferrell play Men's solo skaters Jimmy MacElroy and Chazz Michael Michaels, fierce competitors who tie for the gold medal in a world level competition. The end up getting into a fight on the podium and are banned from competitive skating. A loophole only bans them from singles skating, so MacElroy's old coach (fantastically played by Craig T. Nelson) decides that he should pair up with Michaels to compete.
Silly? Ridiculous? Insane? Yes. Funny? YES! The rest of the movie follows the training of the new pair, the tricky move they need to learn to win, and the weak point, the evil reigning couples pair, that will stop at nothing to win the title, and enlist their indentured-servant younger sister to sabotage the fragile friendship being forged by Michaels and MacElroy.
I laughed a lot, however, and Ferrell's adlib moments are extremely funny. While Heder may not have a lot of range, he is a good actor with the physical comedy, and is also pretty cute and funny in his own way.
Go see these movies!
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