IT'S ALL IN HIS HEAD IN `FICTION'.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

Solitary IRS agent Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) lives in an apartment as anonymous as a motel room. There he eats dinner alone, always brushes his teeth with precisely the same number of strokes and always goes to bed exactly at 11:13 p.m. It's a routine that he unthinkingly believes gives him comfort, until one day he hears a voice narrating all the mind- numbing activities of his same-old, same-old day. Then, understandably, Harold freaks - and is pushed to change.

``Stranger Than Fiction'' owes an obvious debt to screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's ``Adaptation'' and ``Being John Malkovich.'' But the movie, sporting Zach Helm's clever script and Marc Forster's nimble direction, forges its own identity, heading into the kind of sentimental, life-affirming territory that Kaufman is loath to visit. It's one of those rare live-life-to-the-fullest movies that manages to get its message across without making you queasy.

Harold wants to find out why he's hearing a narrator in his head.

After he rejects a psychologist's rational diagnosis of schizophrenia, Harold consults a lit professor (an energetic, engaging Dustin Hoffman, delivering a master class in comic timing) in an effort to find out who is ``writing'' his life. The author turns out to be a reclusive writer (Emma Thompson) whose specialty is finding inventive ways to kill her subjects.

Harold, it appears, is next. ``You have to die,'' Hoffman's prof tells him. ``It's her masterpiece.''

That death sentence, as well as the awareness that comes from somebody's voice describing your so-called life in excruciating detail, spurs Harold to action, and Ferrell expertly gives us a portrait of a man learning to love the feeling of being adrift.

There's also an impossibly adorable love story involving an anarchic cookie-baker (!) played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. The scene where she bakes Harold his first warm cookies will have you smiling until next Tuesday.

As the film discards some of its more obvious Kaufman-inspired devices and clamps down on its feel-good message, it gains a momentum derived from the strength of the filmmaker's conviction in the material. The movie's first half hour tries too hard to be clever, but Forster keeps you hooked, deftly moving between tones - Harold is earnestly trying to figure out if he's living in a comedy or tragedy - until he finds the appealing earnestness he's after.

When Harold spends what he believes to be his last night on earth snuggled on the sofa with his lover, watching a great movie, then going to bed, holding her in his arms, your first thought is:

Shouldn't he be doing something more earth-shattering, more out-of-the-ordinary? Nope. Satisfaction comes from the small moments, the simple pleasures. At least, that's the argument ``Stranger Than Fiction'' makes -- and it presents a pretty convincing case.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

[e-mail]

STRANGER THAN FICTION - Three stars

(PG-13: some disturbing images, sexuality, brief language, nudity)

Starring: Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson.

Director: Marc Forster.

Running time: 1 hr. 53 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: A Charlie Kaufman movie for people who don't like Charlie Kaufman movies.

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Photo:

Will Ferrell finds no escape from the voice in his head, which narrates the mind-numbing story of his habit-ruled life.