Stranger than Fiction is a 2006 American fantasy comedy drama film directed by Marc Forster, produced by Lindsay Doran and written by Zach Helm.

Harold Crick is an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent living a solitary life of strictly scheduled routine.

On the day he is assigned to audit an intentionally tax-delinquent baker named Ana Pascal, Harold begins hearing the voice of a woman narrating his life.

When his wristwatch stops working and he resets it using the time from a bystander, the voice narrates that this action will eventually result in Harold's death.

As Harold audits Ana, he develops an attraction to her, but when he obliviously rejects a gift of cookies because it could be considered a bribe, he takes it as a sign that he is in a tragedy.

Jules takes such an improbable occurrence as proof that Harold is no longer in control of his own life, and advises he enjoy the time he has left, accepting whatever destiny the narrator has for him.

Karen reveals that when Harold reset his wristwatch, the bystander's time was three minutes fast, so he reached the bus stop early.

However, Karen, traumatized by the idea that she unwittingly narrated real people to their deaths, cannot bring herself to finish the sentence declaring him dead.

Harold, heavily injured, wakes up in a hospital, and learns that shrapnel from his wristwatch — which was destroyed in the collision — blocked his ulnar artery and saved him from bleeding to death.

[3] Helm named each of the film's chief characters after a famous scientist or scientifically influential artist, including Crick, Pascal, Eiffel, Escher and David Hilbert.

The bakery that Ana Pascal runs is located in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago, and is called La Catedral Cafe & Restaurant.

The site's consensus reads: "A fun, whimsical tale about an office drone trying to save his life from his narrator, Stranger Than Fiction features a subdued performance from Will Ferrell that contributes mightily to its quirky, mind-bending effect.

[14] Todd McCarthy in Variety reviewed the film positively, praising its invention, and Ferrell's performance as nuanced; first playing a tight focused caricature of the company man, then exercising more humanity and wit without being "goofy".