Daily Archives: June 8, 2009

Will Ferrell—Your Hero?

Land of the Lost, the movie, not the TV show I used to watch way back when, opened on the weekend and reportedly bombed. In fact, it’s been called “the first bomb of summer.” Ouch. I’m partly to blame, I guess, as I didn’t go. But it’s on my list of  “possibles” so if you saw it, let me know what you think.

However, if it’s any comfort to Will Ferrell, he did benefit financially from me over the weekend, because I rented the DVD of Stranger Than Fiction, a movie he did a couple of years ago with Emma Thompson. He must have made at least a penny in royalties off my rental fee…

Ferrell plays Harold Crick, an IRS agent who starts to hear a voice narrating every action in his tedious life. Turns out he’s a character in a book being written by reclusive author Karen Eiffel (Thompson), though his figuring that out takes up a large part of the movie (the audience is clued in from the start). Bad news for Crick, he’s doomed to die at the end of the book, when he realizes that, it becomes a race against time to save his life just as it starts to get interesting.

I really enjoyed this movie, it was so different and quite unpredictable. And quite unexpected to see Ferrell as a romantic hero (in an unlikely romance with a baker played by the very cute Maggie Gyllenhaal), especially if you’re more used to his Talladega Nights-style of character. I must admit, Ferrell’s not the man I have in my head when I’m writing one of the romantic heroes in my books, but maybe I could rethink that…

Dustin Hoffman played a big part in the movie, too, and of course, he was recently paired up with Thompson in Last Chance Harvey,  another movie I really enjoyed. I wonder if acting in Stranger Than Fiction together was what sparked their pairing in Last Chance Harvey?
So, did you see Land of the Lost?  Love it, hate it? Got any other Will Ferrell recommendations?

Abby
www.abbygaines.com