It isn't that Harold Crick doesn't care, he just doesn't know how to. The blandest of accounting wonks, Harold understands numbers not people and his self-awareness of this essential character flaw causes a slight stab of pain that is as close to emotion as Harold gets. That Harold makes his living as an auditor for the IRS - a harbinger of emotional upheaval for the jangled financial nerves of the middle class - is the first incongruity of "Stranger Than Fiction." The second is that he is played by Will Ferrell.

You have to brace yourself for this, because watching Will Ferrell inhabit the flat-line personality of Harold Frick is akin to watching Jim Carrey attempt to play Gandhi. You can go crazy waiting for the ebullient Ferrell to explode out of character.

Well, I'm going to save you about a 110 minutes of anxiety; he pulls it off - and with an amazing amount of grace.

Ferrell's Harold has refined his life to a well oiled, if slightly dispirited, machine. He counts his way through the many routines of his lonely day, knowing precisely how many times he brushes each of his teeth, and how many steps he has to run for the bus.

Then one day the prim voice-over that has been narrating our introduction to Harold becomes apparent to him as well. Harold hears the events of his life not only being described but predicted. Somebody somewhere is writing a story and Harold has been hijacked as the main character. Harold isn't altogether comfortable with this new arrangement and when the disembodied narrator lets drop that he is soon to be knocked off, Harold finds himself running for his life and bumping into all sorts of interesting people.

It's in the bumping that "Stranger Than Fiction" lights up. The always entertaining Linda Hunt shows up as a befuddled psychiatrist and Dustin Hoffman does a great turn as a literature professor, Jules Hilbert, who is trying to give Harold back some sense of control over his life by deciphering what kind of story Harold is living (if it's a tragedy the prognosis is not good). Hoffman, when well managed by his director, has a way of motoring through his lines like he is oblivious to every interest but his own and then, quite suddenly, slipping in some pithy, and funny, insight. Hoffman, like Ferrell, is well managed in this film. Director Marc Forster is going for a cool, cerebral style of comedy and he succeeds on all counts.

The best roles are reserved for the two women who become central to poor Harold's life. Harold's latest audit target, Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal) - a baker and Harvard Law dropout - has decided to make her own decisions about which taxes she is willing to pay. The poor distracted Harold finds himself falling for Ana while simultaneously - with Jules help - trying to deduce from her reaction to him whether he is in a romantic comedy or the aforementioned tragedy.

Gyllenhaal is one of those actresses whose beauty comes more from the energy she radiates than her features. This is good news for Will Ferrell. Ferrell has spent most of film career trying, without much luck, to connect with something besides his gags. Finally, with Gyllenhaal he's found real romantic chemistry. The vivacious and elegantly tattooed Gyllenhaal animates her scenes with Ferrell in a way that allows him to relax a little and round out his performance. In "Stranger Than Fiction" Ferrell is less of a clown and more of a leading man-and it looks good on him.

Harold finally comes face to face with the novelist who has been busily typing out the arc of his life. Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) is an eccentric, chain-smoking Brit with an unfortunate reputation for killing off her leading characters.

Thompson may be the scene stealer in this elegantly cast movie. Thompson gives Kay a disdainful English veneer with bits of angst and eccentricity breaking through the cracks, keeping her slightly off kilter so you don't know, until the last line is typed, whether she will throw in her lot with a long awaited masterpiece or our hapless Harold.

You'll just have to go to the Admiral to find out.

Directed by: Marc Forster

Rated: PG 13

(Three stars)

Bruce Bulloch can be reached via wseditor@robinsonnews.com