Stranger Than Fiction

If this shaggy dog story had stuck to its droll guns, it might have emerged as a minor mordant classic on the order of Alfred Hitchcock's THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (1965). But director Eric Bross and screenwriters Tim Garrick and Scott Russell betray the audience's goodwill by overtaxing a slight anecdote with more bloody violence and psychological heft than it can handle. At a Salt Lake City bar, Violet (Natasha Gregson Wagner), Austin (Todd Field) and Emma (Dina Meyer) toast their friend Jarod (Mackenzie Astin), who's just been hired by a prestigious law firm in Washington DC. Later that evening, a frightened Jarod begs for their help in disposing of a nude male corp...