There is a man.

And, at first, that is all that matters about this man: he exists.

He has a job, true. He has a sort-of friend he only talks to at work. He has nice but unassuming suits. Beyond that, his life is as featureless and unadorned as his apartment. Seriously—hotel rooms have more life and verve than this guy’s place.

Okay, and he’s not entirely sexless. When he meets an interesting, attractive spitfire of a woman, he notices. So we know that much about him now: despite his completely regimented existence, there are particular types of women who can catch his eye and occupy his thoughts… and there’s no better way to learn what makes a person tick than by watching them And we know, somewhere in the back of our minds, that this man’s life will become a tragedy. Story economics tells us you can’t have a tragedy if there’s no connection to the main character, and so we know we will learn more.

In fiction, the quickest, easiest, and most entertaining way to develop a blank-slate character—or, if you prefer, the easiest way to learn about that character—is to create adversity. Remove their comfort zones. Challenge them. Test them. Be God to the blank slate’s Job. After all, there’s nothing more boring to an audience than a comfortable routine. What can be learned from watching someone live a static life?

All that may sound pretty strange. Or perverse. Maybe even cruel. But that’s entertainment: something amazing, maybe even horrifying, has to happen to someone else. And we have to know enough about them to care enough to be enlightened, entertained, or hurt.

Stranger Than Fiction treads this territory with a deceptively lighthearted touch. So lighthearted, in fact, that for the first 30 to 45 minutes it feels way too cute and way too harmless—a bauble with an interesting premise and not much else going for it. And it is an interesting premise.

Will Ferrell is eerily convincing as nonentity Harold Crick, an IRS auditor whose life gains conflict—and substance—when it becomes the subject of recluse writer Kay Eiffel’s (Emma Thompson) new novel. Crick knows this because he can hear Eiffel narrating his life, with a better vocabulary than he himself possesses. Unable to accept schizophrenia as an explanation, Crick instead turns to lit prof Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) for advice. In one of the film’s showy-clever and yet undeniably charming scenes, Hilbert asks Crick a series of apparently insane questions ("Do you rule an underground kingdom?"). Crick asks why. Hilbert explains that he wants to find out what genre Crick’s life story is in.

As it turns out, Crick’s life isn’t really all that original, even as it gains definition. He’s straightlaced, so naturally he falls for the rebellious woman with the prominent tattoo. His life is scheduled down to the bone, so naturally he will find value in giving parts of himself up to fate. All the elements of your standard feel-good life-affirming romanticomedy are there. The premise isn’t even that original; a quick sift through genre fiction in multiple mediums will yield a variety of stories where the creation meets its creator.

But the execution here is something special. It’s sneaky. It starts slow, cute, sweet, and potentially quite predictable; the only real twist is that the main character becomes as aware of the narrative of his life as we are. But the momentum is there. What starts off cute ends with enormous weight, as Crick meets Eiffel and both must come to terms with what they mean to one another. What starts cute ends up—well, almost cosmic.

But I may not be very objective about this film. (Should a critic be objective about anything?) This kind of idea—characters plumbing the depths of fiction, figuring out what kind of power story has over themselves, their creators, their audience—is catnip for filmmakers and film critics. Not a one of them, artist and critic alike, doesn’t secretly believe their artistic obsession is the most important in the world. Why else dedicate their lives to it?

So maybe Stranger Than Fiction is an indulgence. All I can tell you is that I was fascinated and moved by it.