Directed by Marc Forster. Starring Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Rated general. Opens Friday, November 10, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, “It is not length of life, but depth of life.” Imagine Will Ferrell as an IRS drone who suddenly twigs to this and you’ll get the gist of the erudite Stranger Than Fiction. Unfortunately for fans of Ferrell’s blue-collar comedy, not once does the taxman don a diaper.

Director Marc Forster’s quirky film borrows the conceit of 1998’s The Truman Show, then it pulls a plot switcheroo that allows its protagonist, Harold Crick (Ferrell), to know at the outset that he is the central character in a book-in-progress by novelist Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), whose narration is audible to him. Horrified upon hearing Eiffel announce his imminent death, Crick ploddingly sets out to safeguard his future. This involves learning to live a little with the (unconvincing) romantic assistance of dimpled Maggie Gyllenhaal, here channelling a spiteful kitten to portray an anarchic baker whose books and looks Crick is auditing.

The film’s lesson—be the author of your own life story!—has all the subtlety of an illustrated, large-print book, and the clipped, bloodless prose of Eiffel’s supposed masterpiece is less enthralling than a John Grisham novel. That said, curiosity as to Crick’s fate rivets us as rookie screenwriter Zach Helm turns Stranger Than Fiction’s seriocomic pages.

There is a hilarious scene in which a marvellously deadpan Dustin Hoffman, as a literature expert, quizzes Crick to eliminate the possibility that he is, in fact, Frankenstein’s monster, Gollum, or Miss Marple. Thompson’s acting prowess contributes to the film’s more incisive element. The alarming juxtaposition we finally see of Eiffel ?the sophisticated narrator with ?Eiffel the dishevelled worrywart tormented by writer’s block is a canny, Wizard of Oz–style reality check: the tearing back of the author’s “curtain” to reveal the flawed Eiffel towering over Crick’s life is a blatant caution against relying on others we perceive as being all-powerful. Crick, finally using his own brain to grow a pair and tap into his heart, is not, however, so much a contemporary Dorothy Gale as the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion rolled into one. Unfortunately, Ferrell reveals, in a dull role top-heavy with reaction shots, that he’s no Jim Carrey when it comes to manufacturing believable, sit-down gravitas. Now, if there were a toilet involved”¦