Resonate with almost everything you wrote, and you connected me more with the tragedy re the novel. Still, not sure i’d categorize the film as a tragedy. The focus was clearly more on Harold Crick (Ferrell’s character) than the novelist. In a way it’s a concrete real-life triumph for the novelist. Her books are all about the tragic deaths of people who don’t deserve it. In the real world such novels “only” get to indirectly inspire the kind of life-turnaround that Ferrell gets directly through her in-his-head narrative in this SF treatment (and yes, it is another example of fantasy/science fiction infiltrating the mainstream).

The film also gets big bonus points for music - obviously Spoon, and others such as Whole Wide World, the Vangelis tune and The Free Design’s Love You.