the ultimate manic pixie dream girl film?

Actress Zoe Kazan, writer and star of the new romantic comedy "Ruby Sparks"

For the past two weeks Tumblr has been on my case, relentlessly plugging the new film Ruby Sparks with GIFs, screenshots, trailers, what-have-you. The title itself did nothing to elicit a curious response; I wasn’t even positive that it was a movie until late in the game. So naturally I ignored the “meh”-looking propaganda thrown my way.

Dumb move. The film, directed by the husband-wife duo behind Little Miss Sunshine, boasts an appealing backstory. Remember Meryl Streep’s grown children in It’s Complicated? Those three impossibly well-groomed offspring that looked more like a cast of J.Crew models than bi-products of a Meryl Streep/Alec Baldwin divorce? Yeah, the youngest one (real name: Zoe Kazan) began writing a script in 2009. She was only 25, people! I have a sickening feeling that by the time I’m 25 I will have only mastered using the coffeemaker… much less Microsoft Excel.

Kazan, left, in "It's Complicated" aka the J.Crew Spring 2009 Catalogue

Anyway. I’m impressed. And completely smitten with the other half of this film’s origin story. (Can I even use the term “origin story” when it’s not in reference to a superhero? Supernerds, I require guidance.) Kazan wrote the film with her boyfriend of five years, actor Paul Dano, in mind for the film’s protagonist. For those of you who may need a refresher course, Dano played Abigail Breslin’s silence vowin’ brother in Little Miss Sunshine and later starred in the Oscar-nominated There Will Be Blood. Kazan plays opposite, as Dano’s fictionalized, ideal girlfriend who inexplicably becomes a real person. That is, Ruby Sparks.

Kazan and Dano portray a couple caught in an unusual romance.

What caught my especial interest is Kazan’s take on the “manic pixie dream girl” archetype in movies. (Ruby Sparks has been unfairly labeled as another “sullen pseudo-hipster meets his wacky dream girl” vehicle on several occasions.) Kazan says, 

“Everybody is setting out to write a full character. It’s just that some people are limited in their imagination of a girl… I think defining a girl and making her lovable because of her music taste or because she wears cute clothes is a really superficial way of looking at women. I did want to address that. … I am definitely not interested in adding to the genre of Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I’m very happy to have this movie read as a critique of that, if that’s how you want to read it. It’s not how I wrote it — that was not my primary goal. But I really, really think it’s dangerous to reduce a person to an idea.”

Hats off to the girl that finally addressed the MPDG issue, making her a heroine to Warby Parker bespeckled girls everywhere.

Entertainment Weekly recently published an article about this “indie darling” couple and their cinematic baby. To which I respond: I might not even care if this movie is horrific; I find both Kazan and Dano extremely likeable in print.

The trailer for Ruby Sparks, out now:

What say you, film connoisseurs?

P.S. I'm FINALLY getting a romantic comedy out of Daniel Radcliffe. He and Kazan will star in The F-Word, a movie about two friends navigating the art of remaining friends, not lovers. Production starts in August!