There are some people who live exciting lives and then some who live mundane lives. Harold Crick leads a life of solitude and despair.

The one thing that separates Crick from everyone else is that he hears a voice that no one else can hear and the voice appears to be narrating his entire life. Upon hearing the narrator make reference to his “immanent death,” he begins to take his life in a whole new direction.

This is the basic plot of the movie “Stranger Than Fiction,” a feel good dramatic comedy whose main theme is essentially “live everyday to the fullest.”

The movie stars Will Ferrell (as Harold Crick) in what could be considered one of his first truly dramatic attempts, although just the thought of him playing a dramatic part is laughable.

Basically you could take Will Ferrell, stand him in the middle of an open grass field, turn the cameras on and film him standing there for an hour and a half, and most likely it would still be hilarious.

His best characters are those who seem completely serious while doing something funny. It’s the delivery of dry humor with a sort of confused look on his face that makes Ferrell a genius in this role.

As the movie moves along the audience discovers that Harold Crick is the main character of a book written by author Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), and it is Eiffel’s voice that he hears narrating his life.

Little does the novelist know that Crick is a real person and that killing him in the book will result in his real life demise.

Lucky for Crick, Eiffel is struggling with a case of writers block and thus appears the conflict of the movie. We watch as she struggles to find a way to kill off Crick, while he attempts to give his life meaning in his last remaining days.

Director Marc Foster has had success with two of his previous directing attempts, “Monster’s Ball”(2001) and “Finding Neverland”(2004), both of which won an Oscar award and both of which were dramas. For “Stranger Than Fiction” he teams up with writer Zach Helm to try his hand at a comedy film and it appears that he knows what he’s doing.

Dustin Hoffman co-stars as a quirky professor trying to help Crick discover the source of the strange narrative voice he is hearing.

Hoffman pulls through with the same consistency that he always does, producing yet another very well played character. The role seems to be a perfect fit for him.

He brings to the movie a similar style of humor as that of Ferrell, and the chemistry between the two actors and their respective characters is fantastic.

They both look like they’re each about a second away from bursting out into laughter but instead maintain character and deliver their lines of comedy with a facet of seriousness.

The movie also co-stars up and coming actress Maggie Gyllenhaal as Crick’s love interest.

Her lack of experience as a lead was unnoticeable, although her character in the movie is a bit cliqu