There was a buzz in the studio this week for a film that slipped past the cinema and to DVD with little than a wink from the media. Stranger than Fiction is a comedy and drama that has a curious take on life and death. The film follows the twists seen in many contemporary plots – the inside out side, backward forward, end at the beginning and the beginning in the end storyline leads the viewer to its ultimate end.

The protagonist Harold Crick is woken up from the slumber that was his nerdy life by apparent voice in his head. This oddity drives him to find out why this voice appeared in the first place. Directed by Marc Forster this film is shot with strong sense of space and form. The perspectives are sweeping, the colours are considered, the compositions are dramatic, the costumes are elegant, and the graphics seamless.

A striking element to the film is a clean graphic layer which represents the G.U.I (Graphic User Interface – a graphical, rather than purely text based, user interface to a computer), that Harold thinks and possibly sees with every step, every calculation, every process of his nerdy life. A graphic pops in and out of Harold’s thoughts with a human like touch – it is stunning, detailed and un-intrusive.

Stranger than Fiction has 7.6/10 on Rotten Tomatoes with mixed reviews. Will Ferrell is convincing as Harold, as are Emma Thompson’s, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s and Dustin Hoffman’s characters. However the direction of this film is a little fluffy, sentimental and sugary, and the end seems unresolved, leaving it short of sharing the mantel with films like Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Little Miss Sunshine.

The visual effects designers MK12, could have also had a stab at the poster and packaging design these outcomes are pedestrian examples of communication design for such a visually exciting movie experience.

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