She's Out of His Mind

Review: Ruby Sparks

 

Imagine your ideal significant-other. We've all done it. They'd be smart, attractive, funny, and have a great personality. They would enjoy what we enjoy, laugh at what we find funny, and love what we love. They would compliment us in every way.

 

The only problem is that this person doesn't exist. But what if you could make the perfect partner?

Such a phenomena happens inexplicably to Calvin Weir-Fields in Ruby Sparks, a writer who finds his most recent literary project is knocking at his door in real life. He has written about Ruby Sparks and now here she is, identical to every word he has written.

Calvin's brother Harry, the only person to discover the truth, sees this as the best granted wish a man has ever been granted. "You could make her do anything!" Harry exclaims. And he's right. When Calvin types that Ruby speaks a foreign language, suddenly Ruby is fluently going on in French.

Yet despite Harry's enthusiasm, Clavin is wary of his own domineering influence over Ruby. After all, they've fallen in love. But throughout an increasing number of fights and mounting jealousy, Clavin begins to reconsider rewriting Ruby.

 

The film, which could just as easily been the set-up for an entirely lighhearted romcom romp, delivers more than laughs as it takes a darkly seductive and unsettling tone that makes you think deeply about relationships, desires, power, and our own inability to always know what we want.

 

Is Calvin's love for Ruby sincere? Or is his love for her a twisted manifestation of his own narcissism?

 

Calvin is brough to life by Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood). While Dano essentially offers the same character he plays in mot of his movies, he still does it exceptionally well and truly shines in the film's climax.

A lovable and engaging Zoe Kazan (It's Complicated) is not only the driving acting force behind the movie as the titular Ruby Sparks, but is also the film's screenwriter, writing the script for herself and her boyfriend, - you guessed it - Paul Dano.

The fim also has an eclectic supporting cast including Chris Messina (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) as Harry and Annette Bening (The Kids Are Alright) and Antonio Banderas (Desperado) as Calvin and Harry's hippie mother and stepfather who provide the most direct comedy of the film.

 

As a follow-up to their 2006 sensation, Little Miss Sunshine, directing duo Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris have created a film which is quite different from their previous production, but still as enrapturing.

And the screenplay shows that Kazan has inherited her family's creatve genes - her grandfather was legendary, Oscar-winning director Elia Kazan (Gentlemen's Agreement, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, just to name a few), her father is Oscar-nominated writer Nicholas Kazan (Reversal of Fortune), and her mother is Oscar-nominated writer Robin Swicord (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

Overall, Ruby Sparks does not always seem to know which tone it wants to take - comedy, drama, or thriller - and its ending was a bit too neatly packaged for my liking, but as its review in Newsday states, the film "sneaks up on you with deep questions, discomfiting insights, and more emotional punch than you may expect" (Rafer Guzman). Interesting, engaging, and though-provoking, Ruby Sparks is an earnest and largely successful attempt to achieve something spectacularly original.

The Final Word: Go buy a ticket.