Movie Review: Ruby Sparks

My boy Eli Sunday (aka Paul Dano) is back! He, along with his real life girlfriend Zoe Kazan star in this head scratching/morbidly moving comedy. Eli...er, Paul Dano, plays a frustrated young author who begins writing about a conjured up girl from his dreams to help alleviate his writer's block. One day, out of the blue, his fantasy love interest comes alive. Like flesh and blood, Pinocchio/no strings to hold me up, real. What follows is a madcap comedic romp, and utterly depressing/honest take on relationships.

lovers gonna love...

First, I must give major kudos to Zoe Kazan. Not only is she the lead actress/pretty face on the screen, but she also wrote the film's screenplay. The smooth dialogue and realistic take on the otherwise zany plot deserve some praise. Also, I've never seen her in anything before but her acting chops are strong, holding her own onscreen alongside veterans like Annete Bening and Antonio Banderas, and her chemistry with Dano is amazing. Of course that makes sense, they're a real life couple playing a fictional couple in a movie, who are basically a fictional couple seeing how one of them is a figment of the other's imagination...until she comes to life and they become a real, fictional couple. Forgive me, my head is still spinning.

So Ruby Sparks is an entertaining film. It's funny, well shot and beautiful to look at. However, it does have a bit of a dark side. Ruby Sparks spends half the film exploring the intoxicating high of young love, and the cool factor of being GOD (by way of type writer). However, the last half of the film gets pretty morbid in a big way. Dano's character, with his emotional and physiological issues, is both the film's protagonist and antagonist. Dependency, trust, and control issues are bound to arise in a relationship, especially when someone is secretly manipulating the other person's life. Ruby Sparks is cutesy and funny but is also serves as a dead serious examination of relationships and the perils of projecting  idealized expectations onto others. I walked out of the theater feeling like I had just watched 500 Days of Summer, and got kicked in the stomach.