So I accidentally caught Johnathon Dayton’s Ruby Sparks for love of Little Miss Sunshine, perhaps yet again falsely projecting my expectations of awe from a prior work unto this little piece.
Yes, perhaps I was expecting more from this movie but then again, quirky stars and co-stars of the movies Zoe Kazan and Paul Dano stole the show with their glowing on screen presence lending a somewhat magical air to the movie. Love is after all a magical thing, lest I forget (and am thankful of being reminded again recently, what with the boy lighting up my life so unexpectedly).
Getting to be quite the muse in my life with his geeky and intellectual demeanour that paves the way for engaging discourse and banter on everything and anything at all almost all the time, the boy also pointed out the faint drawings on the Pygmalion Effect the movie had, save for the fact that Calvin (Paul Dano) had a greater control than a self-fulfilling prophecy, he could actually “write” Ruby exactly the way he wanted her, the romantic notion of the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl.
You know the movie reeks “indie” when it is produced by Fox Searchlights, features unconventional love and pays tribute to the father of zombie movies, George Romero, in the sweetest of ways, a drive-through zombie movie festival. Love.
Now if I could only remember the Catcher In the Rye quote Calvin makes reference to at the end of the movie at his book launch…
Can we ever write the perfect ideal romance into our lives? I truly hope not, for the that would be the demise of romance itself. For wasn’t life supposed to be lived forwards, savouring whatever comes, be it pain for joy, to the fullest and ultimately capitalizing on the now? Cheers to life and love after all.
