The cliché of the “magic pixie dream girl” is a pretty common one in movies lately.
A introverted nerdy (usually white) guy finds his life turned upside down by a (usually younger) woman who’s all bubbly and quirky and full of life.
Which isn’t automatically a bad thing, except that in these films her role is usually all about helping the male lead achieve his full potential; her potential, whatever it might be, rarely gets a look-in.
Ruby Sparks takes this cliché and puts it under the microscope, though perhaps not in the way it intended : Calvin (Paul Dano) is a nerdy, introverted author who hit it big with his first novel as a teenager and has spent the last decade hiding from his readers and his fame.
With severe writer’s block and no woman in his life, all he does have is a brother (Chris Messina) telling him he needs to get out more and the occasional dream of his perfect girl.
Only when he starts writing about his dream girl he discovers a): he doesn’t want to stop, and b): he wakes up one morning to find her making breakfast.
It seems Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan, who also wrote the script), has stepped off the page and into his life – but how long can Calvin keep even a perfect relationship going?
What seems like a fairly straightforward wish-fulfilment tale gets a little (then a lot) darker as the ramifications of having a partner you can control with a few typed words is explored, and the look at what kind of man would want to go out with a woman they could control completely is refreshingly unsentimental.
Unfortunately the film swerves back to provide a (relatively) happy ending that doesn’t fit the darker critique of its lead that it earlier served up, and while wanting to send audiences home with a smile is perfectly understandable it does make this a film that doesn’t quite fit together into a cohesive whole.
Deconstructing the cliché of the manic pixie dream girl is fine; digging too deep into why her creator made her that way seems to be a step too far.
3 out of 5
Ruby Sparks Australian release: 20th September, 2012 Official Site:Ruby Sparks Cast: Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan and Annette Bening Director: Zoe Kazan
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