Film: Ruby Sparks

Director: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Genre: Comedy
Source: USA (2012)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Blu-ray
Grade: B

I bumped this movie to the top of my queue after a recommendation from a coworker who also happens to be a big movie buff, but she and I don't always match up on tastes. Ruby Sparks was a near miss for me, with a lot that I did like countered by one thing that I didn't, and that thing's name is Paul Dano, and that is exactly why this movie is better than I gave it credit for at first blush.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like Dano a lot as an actor. His Eli Sunday in There Will Be Blood is an unexpectedly strong balance to Daniel Day Lewis's Daniel Plainview. He's done good work in other films as well (most notably Looper), and he does good work here, in that he and his character annoyed me so much as to make the movie almost painful to watch.

And I think that's exactly the point. point. His Calvin Weir-Fields is a wunderkind who everyone has been calling brilliant and amazing for as long as he's been around, and the movie takes on the narcissism and egotism that such an environment produces. We are supposed to see just how in love he is with himself, and how better to do that than to make his words come to life--literally--in the form of Ruby Sparks, the perfect woman he wrote for himself who then shows up in his kitchen.

After a while, his selfishness, his cruelty, and his worst tendencies are allowed to play out, because Calvin can keep writing and make Ruby do, be, and feel whatever he wants. In time, what seems like a fantasy becomes revealed for all that it is: masturbation and self-gratification, and a sad, hurtful form of it at that.

My first reaction to this movie was to dislike it, but the more I thought about it--even as I wrote this review--the more I realized that the distaste with which I viewed Calvin was the point. Calvin pushes away others as he gets wrapped up more and more in himself (via Ruby), and at a certain point even he can't deny the shallowness of his actions. His drive to create the perfect companion is not about the need for love (as he first believes), but about gratifying his own desires. Real love doesn't mean your partner is exactly who you want all the time; real love means you learn to understand and know and accept them because at times they surprise and confound and even disappoint you. It is about learning to embrace and accept and value someone else's personhood. When you can do that instead of making it all about you, maybe you're figuring something out.

I'm not sure the film (or the characters) deserve the ending they get, but maybe that's ok too. I'm not sure I deserve all the things I get in my life either.

One last note: I was impressed to discover that the film was written by Zoe Kazan, the actress who plays Ruby herself. What a great bit of meta trivia: the actress plays a character written by a writer that she wrote as well. I don't know why it impresses me so much that she wrote it, but I think it adds a layer of interest, if nothing else because I hear of fewer male "vanity" projects than female. Plus, it turns out she's Elia Kazan's granddaughter, so there's another thing. 

Alternate Film Title: "I Want Antonio Banderas as My Awesomely Crazy Stepfather Some Day"