The Spark of Life

The idea of a fictional character coming to life is a tantalizing one. With some regularity, new stories are being written that explore the concept. The latest (that I'm aware of) is an indie movie called Ruby Sparks, starring real-life couple Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan.

The film follows a young writer paralyzed by writer's block as he tries to craft a follow-up to his widely heralded first novel. His therapist encourages him to just write a page, even a bad one, and it leads him to write literally about the girl of his dreams, after waking one morning with the quirky memory of her still lingering. As he's pulled deeper into the emerging tale, she suddenly becomes real, living with him as his girlfriend, and ever-changing to match exactly the behavior he writes for her in his pages.

The script was written by Zoe Kazan herself, but while she is cast in the title role, the film is much more about the writer. The story doesn't delve too deeply into any one subject, but brushes up against all kinds of provocative notions. What is it like to achieve success too young? Does it matter that you have neither freedom nor self-control if you don't realize that you don't? Does every romantic relationship decay over time, even if started with literally the perfect partner?

But I think the movie is so fascinated with all of these possibilities (and more) that it fails to settle on any one thing and explore it satisfactorily. The movie sometimes wants to be an all-out comedy, and sometimes a probing drama, and it doesn't transition smoothly from one to the other. A climatic scene that depicts the writer abusing his controlling power is so jarring and unsettling that it actually put me off the movie a bit... while simultaneously making me think the whole thing could have been a much more powerful film had it struck such a tone more consistently.

But despite the shortcomings of the script, the movie drew an impressive cast. Paul Dano will be familiar to fans of "film festival"-type movies, having appeared in Little Miss Sunshine and There Will Be Blood, among others. His brother is played by Chris Messina, who has managed to avoid becoming a household name even as he's appeared it seemingly every film and television show made in 2012. Annette Bening, Antonio Banderas, and Elliott Gould all have small but strong secondary roles. Fans of Arrested Development will appreciate a brief appearance by Alia Shawkat. But it feels like all of them are doing heavy lifting on a script that maybe could have used another draft or two of polish.

I would give Ruby Sparks a C-. It's neither the best nor the worst of the "fictional character comes to life" stories you'll ever encounter.