Nikki Finke has reported that among the 11.10 openers, Marc Forster‘s Stranger Than Fiction is tracking much better than Ridley Scott‘s A Good Year. Ironic given the unmistakable fact that Year is a somewhat better film — not a great one, but certainly better written, better assembled, and more in touch with itself and how to best say what it’s saying.
Year isn’t a comedy, like I said a few days ago, but a light mood piece about nurturing those things in one’s life that need nurturing. One of those tonic-for- the-soul movies about slipping out the back door and being a little bit happy at times, it left yours truly in a pleasant, sitting-outdoors-as-the-summer-sun-sets, enjoying-a-good-glass-of-wine frame of mind.
Fiction has some amusing moments but it isn’t “funny”, trust me — although the folks out there who buy books because of their covers are thinking it must be at least clever because it stars funny-guy Will Ferrell. When I saw it in Toronto I called it a middle-range mindfuck movie that isn’t especially clever or funny or up to anything that holds metaphorical water. That’s because the “imaginative” meta- physical scheme behind it doesn’t really add up or pan out. I almost hated it. In some ways I do hate it. It’s a half-assed little failure.
But Ferrell is biggger than Good Year star Russell Crowe, and Ferrell never threw a phone at anyone so there it is.