Harold (Will Ferrell) is an IRS agent who has gone about his
life with painstaking certainty, leaving little room for adventure. That is until
his life suddenly becomes narrated by an author who always kills the heroes of
her stories, Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). Or perhaps, more importantly, until
he meets a woman who is everything that he is not but is everything he
wants and needs in another person.
My favourite thing about this is that when Harold realises
his life up until now has been the very epitome of mundane and pointless, he
fights back. You know there’s a serious problem when you don’t fight against
it. Thankfully he does and is better for it. Professor Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman)
tells him that if he is going to die soon and he knows he is going to die soon then he
should live the life he has always wanted while he still has time left. So,
obviously, because this blog is basically an excuse to talk about mememe, I’ve
had a think about what I would do if I was to live the life I always wanted.
And I’ll put it here so I can look back at it in a year and think ‘why don’t I
just bloody do it?’
Right so I know this is just a massive cliché and
I just don’t care, I would quit this life and I would go travelling by myself.
But not the travelling that needs lots of money and hotels and insurance. I
want to do it with no money so I have to rely on the kindness of strangers. And
these strangers might not always be kind but I’m sure they’d always be
interesting. I’d listen to the stories of everyone I met and I’d try to help
make new stories. I think that’s it, I think all I want is to be able to roam
the world and listen to the stories that people have to tell. Apparently I’m a
big hippie at heart, who knew?
I was so happy when he decided to live his life. I think
perhaps the scene with Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is the sweetest thing. She is a
baker who he is auditing and they have an awkward relationship where they
clearly like each other but his work gets in the way of anything happening.
Eventually he packs in all the work barriers and he goes to see her after she’s
shutting her bakery for the night. She asks him what he’s carrying and he says “I
brought you flours.” and they are actual bags of flour and if you don’t think that’s
just the cutest thing then you have a heart of stone, I tell you. She still isn’t
too sure about whether to go for it but she invites him back to hers, and she
manages to convince him to play the guitar despite him being nervous. She’s
watching him playing and singing and you can see in her face that she’s gonna
go for it then she kisses him and all is right with the world. I actually
cheered. I get kinda caught up in fiction, y’know?
This kind of story is really great. I’ve always wanted to
write a book where at least one of the characters is aware of the author but I’m
obviously not talented enough to do that, it is so complicated. Emma Thompson
is wonderful (as always!) in this film. And Queen Latifah! She can do no wrong.
Also, I’m not entirely sure how she did it but somehow Maggie Gyllenhaal
managed to make talking about baked goods sound like dirty talk. Anybody else
get that? No...?
9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment