Ruby Sparks Review

8th Oct 2012

Calvin (Paul Dano) is a, once, successful writer who in proper cliche form spends his current time suffering from block, agoraphobia and sitting on his shrinks couch moaning about how awful life is to him despite already being successful, living in a huge apartment and having family and friends who all love and attend to him. Thank god Paul Dano is such a great actor or we may have left the cinema in rather a hurry.

Calvin starts to have dreams featuring his own perfect fantasy lady. So inspired by meeting this character, he puts paper in his typewriter (yup, the old fashioned sort of writer) and starts to write. So overcome with a sudden energy to create again he continues to write his character that he has named Ruby Sparks. But the film takes a sudden left turn when on the way out of the house one day that Ruby suddenly appears!

And we don’t mean ring at the doorbell kind of appear. We mean, in his home, half dressed and talking to him like they have been together for a long time appears! Naturally freaked out, Calvin has takes a bit of time adjusting to the fact that a fictional woman from his head has suddenly appeared.

And who is the magic lady herself – well we may be lead to believe that she is the product of Calvin’s imagination, but in reality she is in fact the product of the actress playing her instead. Zoe Kazan acts as executive producer and writer in what must be a pet project.

The film explores the idea further when Calvin discovers that he can actually control what Ruby does in life and how she feels merely by typing more words. There is obviously the immediate resistance to controlling her which sooner or later comes back to tempt him as their relationship becomes less than perfect.

The trouble is that the film often flirts between the psychological dramatic sides of the relationship to the often barmy comedic side. Obviously a film like this needs to balance laughs, but perhaps lets the silly side of things get a little too silly at times. Either Kazan didn’t have the convictions of the feminist argument she intended to make, or was forced to shoe-horn in extra gags so as not to completely lose her male audience. A comedy sidekick brother here, a set of hippie parents there (watch out especially for an enthusiastic turn from Antonio Banderas),

As a daft comedy with no soul it would have been a very dismissive affair entirely – aside for Dano’s comedic pratfall charms (and worth noting that Dano is quite the screwball comedic when he wants to be). But as a pure drama looking at the effects of control of men over women it might have been an interesting essay. He mixed result is a strong enough effort to warrant a few discussions between both sexes.

It’s all a bit of a one sided argument, but there is fun along the way in the performances and antics they get up to as Ruby slowly tears away at Calvin’s unsettled soul.