“Stranger Than Fiction,” May 5, (2 a.m.) 2014 (2006), DVD. Fed up with “Mulan” (see below), I riffled through some DVD’s my sister gave me long ago and found this old one starring Will Farrell as Harold Crick, a boring and bored IRS auditor whose predictable life becomes the subject of a novelist’s (Emma Thompson) efforts to finish her great novel. She’s got writer’s block. He’s able to hear her narration of his life and it changes everything. Psychiatry can’t help, because of course, he’s not crazy, he is simply being narrated, which leads him to turn to a literature professor/lifeguard (Dustin Hoffman), who can and does. In the meantime, Harold also meets and falls in love with a sweet–although initially poorly crafted, overly strident and foolish—war tax resister (Maggie Gyllenhall). Ahhhhhhhh, the power of literature, although the underlying conceit is never explained. And a renowned professor teaching five courses per semester while directing two PhD theses and working as the part-time lifeguard at the university pool?. Anyway, it’s Farrell becoming Bill Murray or Jim Carey and really flexing a bit. This one is well worth seeing as a guilty pleasure, a la “Groundhog Day”. All the principals are wonderful and I wonder if someone saw this and thought to cast Hoffman and Thompson together in “Last Chance Harvey” a few years later. See this one.