Review of Ruby Sparks (2012) by Diego T — 03 Aug 2013

"Ruby Sparks" begins with an interesting premise and takes it in all kinds of direction to create a story that's pretty profound and will mean different things to you depending on your gender and your own past relationships. The idea is as follows: Paul Dano plays Calvin an author who scored a major hit when he was younger but hasn't really produced anything significant since. Frustrated, depressed and without any real friends to speak of, he's given an assignment by his psychiatrist to write a story about someone who meets him while he is walking his dog. The story is about a girl named Ruby Sparks. Her character completely consumes the man and he feverishly describes her character to the smallest detail until one day the Ruby materializes out of thin air as a real woman. Because she is written as Calvin's girlfriend, she's his girlfriend and the two fall in love. The thing is that this woman clashes with the world around her, not because she's bad or anything, but because there's only as much depth to her person as Calvin has given her. With Calvin at times being a frustrated, depressed and even selfish person, both her and Ruby have to find a way to exist in the world as individual people.

So with this premise, you could go in a lot of different directions and as the movie plays out (without giving too much away) it explores a lot of them. At times the relationship that Calvin and Ruby have is pure bliss, at other times Calvin feels like a bully, manipulating and forcing Ruby to be the woman he wants her to be by expanding on the manuscript that describes her character. Sometimes, Ruby feels like a more 3 dimensional person than her creator and sometimes the fact that she's artificial really shows. It isn't that the movie is inconsistent, it's that Ruby really feels like a woman who was conceived in a week or so but placed in a world where people grow and change every single day. They characters grow and change depending on their mood and the situation they're in and it's fascinating to watch. At times, the movie plays like a sweet romantic comedy, a dream come true for the main characters and at other times it becomes genuinely frightening as some of the implications of a fictional person in a real world are explored.

The performances are terrific and the characters are memorable. Antonio Banderas plays a small but entertaining role as a fun-loving stepfather to Calvin. The contrast between his character and Calvin is startling and it sets off a chain of events that's fascinating. Calvin's brother Harry (Chris Messina) plays a large part in the story and inserts some humour whenever he's on screen. Paul Dano is dead-on in his role but the real gem is Zoe Kazan. The main reason she cast herself in the role (being the writer of the story) might be simply because she had this vision of herself when she was writing the character, but it really works. She really looks the part as a woman that's really attractive, but not too attractive to be unrealistic and she's the kind of plain but spunky girl that nerdy, looser types dream of.

It's a really interesting film that will get your brain going and if you're watching it with some friends, there's a lot of great conversations to be had once the credits stop rolling. It's that right mix of heartwarming, creepy, scary, funny and uplifting too. The best of the film as I've mentioned is that for different people it will really mean different things to them. If you're a single guy that's been looking for that dream girl, you'll look at it and take one thing from the story, if you're a woman who's been in a relationship for a long time it will mean something totally different to you. The less you know about it the better really so check it out, preferably with some other people of the opposite gender watching too. (Blu-ray, June 2013).