Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Will Ferrell stars as Harold Crick, a lonely IRS agent whose mundane existence is transformed when he hears a mysterious voice narrating his life. With the help of Professor Jules Hilbert, Harold discovers he's the main character in a novel-in-progress and that the voice belongs to Karen Eiffel, an eccentric author famous for killing her main characters in creative ways. Harold must quickly track down Eiffel and stop her before she conjures up a way to finish him off.

I am not a big fan of Will Ferrell. His type of comedy doesn't usually do much for me, so when I got this film in for review, I didn't think I would like it much. Thankfully I was wrong. Stranger than Fiction is an interesting dramatic comedy that takes a story we've seen many times before and presents it in a fresh way. Ferrell isn't as over-the-top as he usually is, and his performance here is actually quite good. His supporting cast is excellent as well. This new special edition doesn’t include any new cuts of the film but instead ups the ante in terms of supplements.

The HD transfer seems to be identical to the previous release, which isn’t a bad thing. The image has a consistently clean and detailed look to it with very nice color rendition. Contrast is probably the only weakness, with some occasionally washed out blacks that hurt image depth. The image has a nice sense of dimension and fine object detail can be excellent at times but this one still falls just a bit short of a perfect score.

The soundtrack has been redone in Dolby TrueHD this time around but it didn’t sound any different in direct comparisons with the previous PCM mix. I loved the subtle cues that were thrown in with the fantastical elements of the film though. They added to the overall ambience. The front soundstage sounded extremely natural with a great presence. Dialogue sounds spot on with natural timbre and balance within the mix. Even the narration sounded clean and detailed without any noticeable strain. Dynamic range can be impressive at times, but this is a subtle mix overall.

This new edition features a pair of feature commentaries that weren’t included the first time around along with some new deleted scenes. You also get some production features that look at the making of the film. This title is also BD-Live enabled.

Sony delivers its second double-dip for this one and anyone who has the first version may want to decide for themselves if the extras are worth replacing your existing copy with. The A/V presentation didn’t change any that I could see. This is still a great film though and if you haven’t given it a chance I would really suggest doing so.