Is your life a comedy or a tragedy? For Will Ferrell in Stranger than Fiction, the answer is a little bit of Column A, a little bit of Column B.

Ferrell (Old School) stars as Harold Crick, a shy IRS agent whose entire life gets turned upside down when he finds himself no longer in control of his life. Instead, that honor goes to Emma Thompson (Love Actually), who plays disgruntled British novelist Kay Eiffel trying to find a topic for her novel. Lucky for her and unfortunately for Crick, her topic is his life.

We see Crick as a man of calculated, obsessive measurements: He brushes his teeth the same number of times each day, takes the same number of minutes for his coffee break every morning and can do any math problem in his head in seconds. An insufferable loner, Crick is still content with his habits after 12 years of the same routine – until he starts hearing voices.

Schizophrenia? It’s suggested, but Crick argues, “The voice isn’t telling me to do anything, it’s telling me what I’ve already done. Accurately, and with a better vocabulary.” For the most part, this random introduction into Eiffel’s narration of his life is annoying and intrusive.

“Harold suddenly found himself beleaguered, and exasperated outside the bakery … cursing the heavens in futility,” the narrator explains.

“No I’m not!” Crick responds to the sky. “I’m cursing you, you stupid voice! So shut up and leave me alone!”

Crick deals with the voices until he hears one particularly terrifying phrase: “Little did he know” that events had been set in motion that would lead to “his imminent death,” Eiffel says.

With this dreadful announcement, Crick begins an unconventional quest to prevent his fate. Finally realizing that he is part of a story – but not knowing yet that it is Eiffel’s – Crick seeks out the help of professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman, Perfume). Together, Crick and the quirky Hilbert decide the best course of action is to learn whether or not Crick’s life is a comedy or a tragedy. If it’s a comedy, then Crick will live happily ever after; if it’s a tragedy, Crick is doomed.

And as the audience already knows, things don’t look too promising for Crick. His apartment home has been recently smashed through with a giant construction crane, and his love interest is a rebellious tax-evading cookie-baker (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Happy Endings). And, when Hilbert finally figures out Eiffel is Crick’s narrator – and that she always kills off her lead characters at the end of her novels – Crick’s life seems all but over.

This final piece of the puzzle causes Crick to wake up to the beauty of life around him. This transition is poetic irony at its finest and most heart-breaking while making its point. Writer Zach Helm and director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland) effortlessly toy with concepts such as irony, and imaginatively do so without taking away from the flow of the film. Forster is also inventive in turning Crick’s obsessive-compulsive tendencies into visuals on the screen, thoroughly enhancing the aesthetic charm of the film. English majors will also be quite familiar with the discussion of the structure of a novel and analyzing the differences between the Greek comedy and tragedy.

However, if all this talk of literature and irony doesn’t interest you, watching Will Ferrell and the rest of the cast is plenty worth it. Ferrell plays the perfect Crick: average, quiet, shy and introverted. While many love the outrageous Ferrell from films such as Old School and Anchorman, Ferrell manages to suppress his wild side and still remain very funny. Thompson is perfect as a chain-smoking, disheveled novelist amidst a 10-year writer’s block, especially while traveling to hospitals to figure out a way to kill Crick – without knowing he’s real.

One of the more intriguing parts of the film is the relationship between Ferrell and Gyllenhaal, whose characters are natural enemies and complete opposites. Not only is Crick an IRS auditor, he even claims he “doesn’t like cookies.” But miraculously, the characters find something in one another that creates great chemistry.

Stranger than Fiction is a film for English majors, indie rockers (check the awesome soundtrack) and, most of all, hopeless romantics as a whimsical film that manages to teach viewers a lesson about enjoying the serious irony in life.

And yes, it keeps Will Ferrell as the current king of comedy.

Contact reporter Adam Winer at diversions@dbk.umd.edu.