Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is an ordinary man. He lives an ordinary life in an ordinary apartment and goes through the same ordinary motions as millions of others do each and every ordinary day. Nothing about him screams of either importance or inadequacy, and other than the fact he works as a claims investigator for the IRS there isn’t a thing about him that could ever bring another to want to do him murderous harm.

And yet that is exactly what Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) has set out to do. An acclaimed author suffering from a decade’s worth of writer’s block, she’s finally come to the climax of what could be her greatest masterpiece. All she has to do is discover the perfect way to kill Harold Crick, and once she does Karen knows the demons haunting her due to the failure to complete her book will finally go away.

The problem is that Harold Crick really is an ordinary man living an ordinary life and not some figment of Karen Eiffel’s vivid imagination. More so, he can hear her narrating his daily activities as she writes the book’s final chapters. Needless to say, it is really starting to freak him out, especially after she reveals her intentions to do him in. Now Harold is desperately trying to track down this mysterious voice before she can finish her narrative and end his life, even turning to a famous literary theorist (Dustin Hoffman) to help him sort through all the narrated clues before Karen can bring Harold’s life story to a close.

Director Marc Forster’s (“Finding Neverland”) latest fantastical drama “Stranger than Fiction” is a wondrous romantic adventure that sent me out of the theater on a splendidly uplifted high. Working from an inventive and literate script by freshman screenwriter Zach Helm, the movie is a picture-perfect delight first frame to last. Original as it is winning, I found the movie to be a pure joy, easily one of the most entertainingly spellbinding love stories I’ve had the pleasure to enjoy in quite some time.

Considering Farrell is the star (and based on how much I’ve loathed him in previous features) these statements could be considered a surprise. Yet the star is the main reason this whole thing works near as beautifully as it does. Without question, this is the best the actor has ever been. Ferrell’s deadpan talents are perfectly suited to the character. From the mundane minutiae of his everyday motions to the joyful exuberance of performing a song on a lime green guitar, the comedian underplays things beautifully, magnificently opening doors inside the character so touching I was genuinely moved.

It helps, of course, that he has such fantastic support. Hoffman showcases his gift for comedic repartee, while Thompson is in grandly driven form as the tiredly beleaguered writer desperately wanting to break her mental logjam. But it is the lovely and unique Maggie Gyllenhaal (as an audit victim who ends up becoming the object of Harold’s affections) who makes the most indelible impression. It has been a banner year for the actress what with wondrous work in features as diverse as “Trust the Man,” “World Trade Center,” “Monster House” and “Sherrybaby.” But with a plethora of 2006 projects already under her belt I enjoyed her most in this, Gyllenhaal’s one-of-a-kind baker a true treat worth savoring every morsel of.

There are definitely some lapses along the way. Logic is sometimes stretched to the breaking point, and all the stuff revolving around Harold’s apparently omnipotent wristwatch takes whimsy to a plateau bordering on the annoying. Also, as good as everyone is poor Queen Latifah (as a literary assistant sent by Karen’s publisher to get the author back on track) is left so out in the cold by Helm’s script it’s surprising she doesn’t transform into an ice cube. And while the final moments couldn’t help but make me smile, a part of me can’t help but be disappointed the filmmakers couldn’t have found a more interesting and unexpected way to bring things to a close than the very obvious and expected conclusion they stumble upon here.

In spite of all of this, this movie made my heart soar. The film has a rapturous elegance making me feel fantastic, Forster’s delicately confident direction perfectly suited for the almost ridiculous nature of the melodrama. The whole thing is like a “Twilight Zone” episode crossed with the refined absurdities of a Preston Sturges’ classic, making “Stranger than Fiction” a piece of classical romantic fantasy I downright loved.