Great fiction is almost always as good as its most interesting character. Zoe Kazan has written for herself a wonderfully infectious sprite in this film’s title character, Ruby Sparks. Her bright red hair beams off the screen, she’s charming as hell and we don’t seem to mind that’s she blatantly a mystical, hipster dream girl.
But the big problem with “Ruby Sparks” is that the film is really about Ruby’s fictional creator, Calvin (Paul Dano), and not her.
Calvin is the modern equivalent of J.D. Salinger, a visionary who wrote the next great American novel at 19, now plagued with writer’s block trying to envision the next big idea. Calvin’s surrounded by pretentious, faux-intellectuals and his shallow, sex-craved brother Harry (Chris Messina), so you can see why Calvin would feel like a hack if these were the people who admired him.
In a desperate fervor to understand himself, Calvin puts into words the girl of his dreams. In his imagination, she’s constantly backlit with God-like sunlight, and his vision of her is an amalgam of romantic quirks. She’s from Dayton, Ohio, doesn’t know how to drive, is an amateur painter, and so on. Ruby is perfect in all her imperfections.
As Calvin continues to obsess, Ruby suddenly materializes. “It’s love, it’s magic!” So it is, and directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (“Little Miss Sunshine”) have a ball with this concept, testing its limits and becoming absolutely giddy at how few rules it has.
But as likeable as Ruby is, she and many of the other women in “Ruby Sparks” are treated as objects. Placed on a pedestal to be loved and even controlled, she’s there to lift us up in a sweeping sensation of frivolity. Ruby’s courtship with Calvin is a rollicking, jubilant, dizzying montage of dancing, celebrating, kissing and goofing around. It’s all playfulness, not necessarily chemistry or love between the two.
Calvin is really the central character of this story, and Ruby is the symbolic allegory. “Ruby Sparks” reveals that for men hopelessly looking for love, we tend to create an idealized vision for ourselves. We miss the actual person. The same thing happens to Calvin when he has fans drooling over him for sex, enamored by their perception of a legendary writer and intellectual. And no matter how many times he says he’s not a genius, it won’t stop him from having an ego.
This becomes a particularly intense analogy when Calvin tests all of his power over Ruby. It’s a sign of how “Ruby Sparks” becomes a bit too reliant on its gimmick. A movie like 2006’s “Stranger Than Fiction” incorporates a similar plot device, a man (Will Ferrell) becomes stuck as part of someone else’s fictional novel, but it still makes its central character the most interesting part.
But we do care for Calvin and Ruby. We root for their love and we laugh at the film’s goofy fantasy. “Ruby Sparks” is a fun, cute, blissful movie. Like Ruby, all of it seems unreal and we know it’s too good to be true, but we love it all the same.
3 stars
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