Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) has no ambitions, no romantic prospects and no real friends. And because he's an IRS auditor whose daily routine is a science like football is a sport, hopes for any of that changing are faint.

Even still, the arrival of a mysterious female voice – which takes liberty to narrate the moments of Harold's life as if he was a character in her novel – isn't exactly a welcome change to the grind. Think that's bad?

Wait until he finds out why he's hearing voices. Watch what that does to his routine.

Stranger than Fiction is, in fact, fiction and nothing stranger: The plot brings forth some logical contradictions so impossible to reconcile, the filmmakers simply don't address them in hopes that you'll play along. If you can do that, the less you know, the better.

Fiction is a likeable, funny and uplifting fantasy involving a handful of well-developed characters (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emma Thompson, Queen Latifah, Dustin Hoffman and Tony Hale) and a story that could never happen but is fun to imagine and certainly has parallels in our not-so-fictional world.

Extras: Deleted/extended scenes and six behind-the-scenes features.

Grade: B