MovieChat Forums > Stranger Than Fiction (2006) Discussion > Huge Plot Hole!

Huge Plot Hole!

posted 10 years ago by Dave1136
9 replies | jump to latest

Okay let's review: We know Karen Eiffel was writing a novel with Harold Crick as the main character. The voice in Harold's head was Karen and as she wrote it seemed to Harold as she was narrating. In any sense this seemed to be the most logical conclusion. Karen didn't know there was a real person out there exactly like the fictional Harold Crick.

Here's where it get's a little weird and the plot hole comes in: Towards the films conclusion we still hear Karen's voice in Harold's head. Harold found out who the author was and took great lengths to meet her and persuade her not to kill the fictional Harold. We hear Karen saying "Harold remembered a bank of phones in a subway station. "The first one didn't have a dial tone and the second one had some sort of mucus on it. "The third one he dialed and pushed each number very hard" (this isn't word for word but the meaning is the same).

Then Karen new there was a real person named Harold Crick and she shouldn't have been shocked at all when he appeared at her place.

Can anyone explain this?

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] chicago85 10 years ago

Dustin Hoffman told him to stop all activity and stay home and not even answer the phone to stop the plot from progressing so he wouldn't die. So, I guess he was having some sort of impact on her. But in staying home the crane crashed through his apartment and started him in motion again running around and the voice started up again. When he was trying to get to her and stopping at the phones, she may have been just reacting to his real movements.

I don't know everything. Neither do you.

[–] tyshimah3 10 years ago

Even if she knew there was a real Harold Crick somewhere, she still could have shocked when he showed up to see her and called her. I would have been.

"Do you even remember what you came here to find?"

[–] Dave1136 10 years ago

OK, I see your point and granted she still would have been shocked when he showed up at her door but my point is why was her voice still in Harold's head? When he finally found out who the voice belonged to Karen shouldn't have had no knowledge of this!

[–] TreeHuggerKyle 10 years ago

Until the phone rang, she didn't know he was a real person. She was surprised when her phone rang.

Although, I'm not sure who she thought he was going to call. In her story, I'm not sure what was going to come next regarding when the phone was answered.

[–] avortac4 (3622) 2 years ago

This is certainly really stupid; I mean, the narrator and Harold should've been able to interact from the start, because surely the narrator knew EVERYTHING about Harold, even the fact that Harold heard her voice, so she could've talked directly TO Harold to sooth his mind, OR make Harold not hear the voice, or or or...

Also, when Harold was calling her, she should've known it was exactly HER that Harold was calling - the character trying to call the author of the book. Who else could it have been?

It's very implausible that the FIRST TIME she ever noticed that she has GOD-MODE POWERS, was when she typed the period at the end of 'The phone rang again', or was it the 'third time' thing?

So she's been manipulating events, killing real people, etc. for a long time, and NEVER noticed it happened for real?

I mean, she HAD to have written that Harold is calling exactly HER, or HER phone would not have been the one ringing, right? Surely she must have written something like that previously as well.

This movie is a big, nonsensical claptrap mess with an interesting premise that is foiled completely by the completely unbelievable injected romance (no man would want THAT hag, and no woman would want THAT simp), and the wishy-washy, cowardly ending, plus the dull performances.

Even Dustin Hoffman is surprisingly ANNOYING in this movie - never experienced -that- before..

[–] sixteenjune 9 years ago

Harold is not real. There is no person out there who just happens to be exactly like Harold. Harold is a fictional character. Because she has dithered and thought about him for so long, Karen begins to think of him as real. It's as if he's come alive, but he is still a construct, not an actual person.

This is a writer's movie about what happens when your characters take on a life of their own.

[–] Soodinum 9 years ago

Please learn the meaning of plot hole. You misunderstanding the plot is not a plot hole.

[–] ze-serra 9 years ago

What i think happens is that at the very end she rewrote the book to match him not being dead... The rewrite led to a book about a guy who could hear a narrator, which didn't happen in the firt raft of the book... All the movie is a representation of the final version of the book, her and the others being just characters, not different from Harold...