I just saw this movie, although I'd never heard of it, it was really good. Will Ferrel plays Harold, who lives a very mundane life as an IRS tax auditor. One day he notices that there is a mysterious narrator speaking over his every action, putting it into an eloquent literary sentence. He can hear the narrator, but she cannot hear him.
The narration goes something like this:
"Harold brushed his teeth 38 times up and down, and 38 times a crossed. He did this every morning."
"WHO IS THAT? SHUT UP! WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME?"
It makes for some funny stuff at first, but the movie turns out to be much more than your average Will Ferrel laugh-fest. The movie isn't actually all that comical, this seems to be Ferrel's attempt to do some more serious acting--think Jim Carey in "The Truman Show". Will Ferrel gives an amazing performance in this film, I wouldn't say it's as good as Carey's in the Truman Show, but it's definitely an amazing movie.
The movie really takes off when Harold hears the narrator say that his inevitable death will approach when he least expects it. From this point forward, the film follows Harold as he learns to live his life more fully, as he expects his death.
Harold also spends a good amount of time trying to find out who the voice of the narrator belongs to, so that he might convince the woman to stop narrating so that he may live. The story really gets interesting when he finds the woman and finally confronts her, and the two decide what to do about the strange actuality that they have stumbled upon. Both author and character are put in a tough spot, since the story is apparently one of the most amazing stories ever written, and would not be meaningful at all if the main character, Harold, didn't die in it-- the problem is, both know that if Harold dies in the story, he will die in real life as well. This is truly the most amazing part of the movie, as the outcome of Harold's confrontation with the author is both unexpected and admirable.
A great movie, and totally worth the time and money to see it in the theater.
