It will be a revealing test of Ferrell's fan base to see how many of those who thronged to "Talladega Nights" will follow him into the moderately more rarefied territory of "Stranger Than Fiction," which is brainier stuff but far from inaccessible. Non-fans of Ferrell and the most ardent Kaufman devotees likely will find this film too cutesy.

Accompanied by a stream of narration by a British female voice and an assortment of diagrams criss-crossing the screen, Harold Crick (Ferrell) is introduced as a sorry specimen of human life. A senior agent for the Internal Revenue Service in Chicago, he's a virtual automaton; the man rigidly follows the same routine every day, has no friends, enjoys no vacations. A virtual parody of the company man, he doesn't seem quite real.

There's a good reason for this, however, as Harold is a fictional creation, the central character in a new book by celebrated reclusive author Kay Eiffel (Thompson). It is she who is telling Harold's story, but something goes awry when he begins hearing her voice in his head.

"I'm a character in my own life," he tells a shrink (Linda Hunt), who can only imagine he's schizo but recommends him to literature professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who can't initially figure out who's "writing" Harold but recommends he start living the life he's always wanted. And so he does, as he takes up the guitar and puts the make on free-spirited baker Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal), whom he was recently assigned to audit.

First-time screenwriter Zach Helm has an evident gift for invention, and the story fully engages when its ideas are pushed to their limits, forcing the major elements to collide. Kay has been suffering from intense writer's block, to the point where, in an enterprising move, her publisher has installed a sort of enforcer (Queen Latifah) in her loft to make sure she doesn't procrastinate.

Chain-smoking and fulminating about her creative state, Thompson pumps Kay up into a neurotic wonder of a character, quite likable for all her obsessive nuttiness.

Through a fluke, Harold discovers who his creator is and she naturally flips out when he tracks her down. Many complications ensue, the main one, as the professor helpfully points out, being that Kay's novels are always tragic. "You have to die," Jules warns, stressing that to do otherwise would harm a brilliant literary achievement.

Stories constructed in this fashion inevitably box themselves into a corner, and it takes great creative dexterity to satisfactorily resolve them. Strong questions hover over the way Helm sorts things out here; some will feel cheated, others will accept it, but either way the upshot does provide something to chew on afterward.

Although the film's aesthetic is distinctly different, it's not surprising to learn one of Forster's key inspirations for the film was Jacques Tati's 1967 visionary comedy about modern urban life, "Playtime." Without constructing a stylized, artificial world, the director, cinematographer Roberto Schaefer and production designer Kevin Thompson create a subtly claustrophobic sense of boxed-in characters by the way they employ sets and existing buildings. Entire pic was lensed in Chicago, and the city has rarely been used more inventively.

In line with this, Ferrell's performance is highly focused. At first one fears the worst, that he'll be forced to play a one-dimensional, robot-like character throughout. But once he absorbs his predicament, he flexes his humanity without going goofy, resulting in a winning portrayal.

In his exuberant new phase as a character actor, Hoffman continues to be a major boon to any film he's in; his timing has never been better, and his interchange with other actors is superb. The girlfriend strand of the storyline with Gyllenhaal, while pleasant enough, pales a bit compared with the rest.

Pic looks and sounds first-class, and the soundtrack full of pop tunes is unusually arresting.
 
Camera (Deluxe color), Roberto Schaefer; editor, Matt Chesse; music, Britt Daniel, Brian Reitzell; music supervisor, Reitzell; production designer, Kevin Thompson; art director, Craig Jackson; set designer, Kerry Sanders; set decorator, Ford Wheeler; costume designer, Frank Fleming; sound (Dolby Digital/SDDS/DTS), David Obermeyer; sound designer-supervising sound editor, Geoff Rubay; supervising sound mixer, Scott Millan, Michael Semanick; visual effects designer, Kevin Tod Haug; visual effects, FX Cartel, Mokko Studio, BarXseven, Klon Films, Intelligent Creatures; assistant director, Michael Lerman; casting, Francine Maisler, Kathleen Driscoll-Mohler. Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentation), Sept. 8, 2006. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 113 MIN.