I decided to buy this DVD after seeing a trailer for the movie on another DVD I got recently, the storyline sounded different and it intrigued me, so when I got an HMV e-voucher, I rushed to purchase this.

Anyway, to explain, the storyline of the movie is that tax man Harold Crick (played by Will Ferrell), leads a pretty boring life, doing the same things every day, his life run like clockwork, until one day he notices (or more, hears) something strange, the voice of a narrator talking about him, describing what he's doing. This obviously confuses him and as it continues, he asks people if they can hear the voice but they can't and he gets accused of having schizophrenia (although it isn't schizophrenia and this is only mentioned once in the film, its not really about mental health issues). However when he really gets worried is when he's waiting for his usual bus ride home and the narrator voice mentions something along the lines of 'little did Harold know that on a seemingly regular day like this, he was about to face his death' and on hearing that, he runs away scared and taking the forced advice of a therapist, goes to a local University to ask for help from Jules Hilbert (played by Dustin Hoffman), an English Literature Professor. Now at first he's very sceptical but on mentioning a particular phrase that the narrator voice used ('Little did he know'), he reckons that he can help Harold (apparently professor Hilbert has written whole papers solely on 'little did he know'(!), that what makes him believe that it is indeed an author talking Harolds story, if you know what I mean) and so from there, the film follows Harold trying to avoid the worst happening to him, with professor Hilbert working to identify the author and help him try to discover the ending of the story and by doing so, he leaves his rather dull ran like clockwork work and home life behind and starts to do things that he'd always wanted to, like play the guitar and even get close to a client that he had to audit as part of his job, which is something you feel he would never have done otherwise.

In the end, he may be brought across at the start of the movie as a rather boring middle-aged tax man, who doesn't do much and lives a very bland day to day existence, but you really do end up feeling for him and cheering him on and the movie itself I certainly wouldn't describe as bland.

This is a great movie to watch if you want to see something different. The movies benefits greatly by its cast of well established actors and actreses including of course Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman and Queen Latifah, another comedy actress who plays the author Karen's assistant, just don't let the comedy actor and actress' names confuse you into thinking that this is a film with major laughs around every corner, though there are some moments that will make you chuckle, there is some humour there definately but its more of a semi serious, uplifting drama with a sprinkling of comedic moments, I would say. Well worth renting or at least watching once.