The main character is Harold Crick wonderfully played by Will Ferrell. "I am an IRS agent, everyone hates me," says him. He is also the main character of a book Kay Eiffel (played by Emma Thompson) who always killed her main character in the end of her book. So far she's successfully, very successfully, got eight of them killed. Somehow this time, Harold started to hear her voices narrating the book in progress. May be Harold is the only one who's real or may be the others also did, but died anyway. The story goes from here.
Other important characters:
Ana Pascal, played by the sexy Maggie Gyllenhaal, is a bakery owner who's audited by Harold and, of course, fell in love with;
Dr. Jules Hilbert, played by a rain man like Dustin Hoffman, is a literature professor obsessed with the Eiffel's work or the perfection of the story.
Penny escher, played by Queen Latifa, is Eiffel's publisher appointed assistant/secretary, who's job is to make her finish the book on time, ie efficiently and promptly kill Harold in time before the deadline.
The case is excellent in delivering the plot, which some times switching between Eiffel imagining boring ways to kill Harold and reality when a demolishing crew mistakenly took Harold's apartment wall out with a crane.
"Did you say 1893? Oops."
Finally, although I'm curious how the ending is going to be, I'm also certain it will be a Hollywood happy ending, when Harold was telling Ana how the food she gave away to homeless people hanging around her store can be used to deduct all her taxes.
This movie tells you how to face the seemingly certainties of death and taxes, and most importantly, how to beat both.
It is one of the best movies so far this year.
Memorable quotes:
Penny Escher (Queen Latifa) : Did you smoke all these cigarettes?
Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson): No, they came pre-smoked.
Kay Eiffel: I read this, in this fantastically depressing book, that when you jump from a building, it's rarely the impact that actually kills you.
Penny Escher: Well, I'm sure it doesn't help.
Kay Eiffel: [narrating] Little did he know that this simple seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death.
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