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Audiences waited six long years for the return of Little Miss Sunshine’s filmmaking duo, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. And when word of the follow-up began circulating, movie lovers anticipated more of the same clever comedy and indie charm. But while Ruby Sparks definitely tries to capture that same lovable quirkiness, it doesn’t really succeed.
Little Miss Sunshine’s Paul Dano stars as Calvin Weir-Fields, an acclaimed young author whose career and love life are both struggling. He can’t seem to come up with an idea for the new novel that he’s supposed to be writing—and he’s given up on relationships because women are only interested in him because of the bestselling novel he wrote a decade ago.
When Calvin starts having vivid dreams of the perfect woman, he takes his shrink’s advice and starts writing about her. And as he creates her on the page, he finds that he’s falling in love with her. Then, one morning, Ruby (Zoe Kazan, who also wrote the screenplay) appears in his kitchen, as if she’d been there all along. And Calvin quickly discovers that no relationship is easy—not even a relationship with the perfect woman.
When Little Miss Sunshine came out in 2006, it was unlike anything that audiences had ever seen. It was quirky and clever and lovably awkward—and its overwhelming success sparked a new trend in hipster indies like Juno. But that was 2006. Today, hipster indies are everywhere—and it takes more than just a cute concept and a couple of quirky characters to make a movie worthwhile.
Ruby Sparks sounds like it could be a fun movie—a light and entertaining comedy about a lonely young man who writes his dream girl into being (with disastrous results, of course). The problem, however, is that once the story is set up, it veers toward awkwardness and melodrama. And it ends up feeling uncomfortable and even bitter—as if Kazan wrote the story while recovering from a bad relationship with a controlling boyfriend.
Meanwhile, even the quirky characters are less than lovable. Dano’s Calvin has potential, but his neuroses and self-pity make him a difficult character to like. It’s also pretty clear from his creation of this cutesy, doe-eyed pixie that, despite the fact that he’s pushing 30, he’s anything but mature (and, as his brother points out, he knows nothing about women). And it’s all downhill from there. Once Ruby walks off the page, he becomes clingy and possessive and controlling—and almost entirely unlikeable.
Kazan’s Ruby, meanwhile, has nothing going for her—apart from her cute little hipster outfits. Of course, she’s written that way; she’s supposed to be a kind of brainless, subservient robot. But that doesn’t make her fun to watch; it mostly just makes her irritating.
While it has a promising premise and an impressive pedigree, then, Ruby Sparks simply doesn’t have the same indie charm of the filmmaking team’s delightful debut. So instead of checking out this ill-advised romance, I recommend rewatching Little Miss Sunshine instead.
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