So many words needed to let all this out.
Acting/script/direction was really good, cinematography was great as well, but I don't want to talk about any of that, I want to talk about the concept it explores instead.
(It's like a hipster movie. No other word for it.)
Okay, so it's about Calvin, a novelist who writes about his 'dream girl' (literally: 'dream' girl), who somehow by some miracle becomes an actual, living, breathing, PERSON.
Well, when I say 'person'....
EDIT:~~Okay so this is where I delve into the plot itself and if you don't want that and what to keep it 'a mystery' then just jump right to the VERY last paragraph where I rate the movie. Seriously. But if you don't mind having a slight idea... then think 'Paper Towns' by John Green or 500 Days of Summer.~~
This movie (I'm tempted to say 'story') is all about how guys seem to want this 'manic pixie dream girl' (henceforth, MPDG) all their lives, and I don't want to believe it's true but I know it is, and I know it in the most personal sense (at least SOME do, okay?)
The concept is fantastic, because I think it does a VERY good job of showing how people are real and they're not 'writable' and/or 'set in stone (paper)' like characters in books are, and the thing is, I feel like girls in general get it. Like ALL of us girls have an idea of whom our 'ideal' guy is, but it's not as cruel as the idea of a MPDG, in my opinion. I mean, sure, we have an idea definitely, but we don't try to impose them on real people (at least I like to think so; I can only speak for myself and my group of friends).
I can attest this is true for guys as well--most of the guys I know seem to NOT have a specific idea at all, and maybe this idea of a MPDG is what EVERY guy secretly wants or dreams about the same way EVERY girl dreams about Prince Charming, and maybe this whole MPDG thing is not even that big of a deal to make a movie about, I DON'T KNOW.
REGARDLESS of gender, if there are people out there who dream of guys or girls in the same way the lead dreams of his 'one true love' in this movie, and heck even if they didn't, I think stuff like this would still open up people's eyes and they would start to realize how unfair it is to do stuff like that--to think of people as 'more than just people' as John Green put it in Paper Towns. And I WANT to say 'Regardless of gender' because this story was written by a girl! By the every same girl who plays Ruby Sparks in the movie actually: Zoe Kazan.
But it's strange--every 'romantic' book that talks about girls as magical creatures who maybe aren't even real, ALL end in the SAME way--with the glaring fact that they ARE real and that they are human, and not just some two-dimensional art on a canvas.
I think it's strange how there are so many movies and books like this (Paper Towns included) and these are things that are primarily written for a male audience I think, because I don't think girls can relate to the lead--they can only relate to the girl itself, maybe---and the thing is, they ALL end in the same way, too: the girl just says "I'm REAL and I'm not just an IDEA!" and even then the guy doesn't seem to get it, and he just seems confused and offended that a girl can be different from the idea he has of her.
And this movie I think does an even better job that Paper Towns (sorry, John Green. I still love you, though) because in THIS movie, the guy actually DOES try to make her fit into his idea of her and well, ultimately when the shit hits the fan, and the 'meltdown' takes place, everything falls into place like I wanted it to. It was VERY well done in terms of acting and direction, by the way. It was fantastic. The actor (Zoe Kazan) was REALLY good in this particular scene. It must have been super challenging to do all that.*
All being said and done, I wasn't too happy about the ending itself, actually.
I mean, sure, it had a little bit of character development but...I don't know. Maybe he should have (**SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ FURTHER!!!**) met an Autumn after Summer like in 500 Days of Summer. I think I would have liked it more then.
EDIT: This is from Wikipedia:
Rating: 2.5 on 5 stars.
And yes, I can be a critic too.
*Another movie example of this concept is 500 Days of Summer. EVERY guy I have met and who has admitted to watching the movie, LOVED it, but I personally thought it was just okay (maybe a 2 on 5). Also, do all the actors who fit into this role of a quirky/MPDG have to be called 'Zoe'?
Acting/script/direction was really good, cinematography was great as well, but I don't want to talk about any of that, I want to talk about the concept it explores instead.
(It's like a hipster movie. No other word for it.)
Okay, so it's about Calvin, a novelist who writes about his 'dream girl' (literally: 'dream' girl), who somehow by some miracle becomes an actual, living, breathing, PERSON.
Well, when I say 'person'....
EDIT:~~Okay so this is where I delve into the plot itself and if you don't want that and what to keep it 'a mystery' then just jump right to the VERY last paragraph where I rate the movie. Seriously. But if you don't mind having a slight idea... then think 'Paper Towns' by John Green or 500 Days of Summer.~~
This movie (I'm tempted to say 'story') is all about how guys seem to want this 'manic pixie dream girl' (henceforth, MPDG) all their lives, and I don't want to believe it's true but I know it is, and I know it in the most personal sense (at least SOME do, okay?)
The concept is fantastic, because I think it does a VERY good job of showing how people are real and they're not 'writable' and/or 'set in stone (paper)' like characters in books are, and the thing is, I feel like girls in general get it. Like ALL of us girls have an idea of whom our 'ideal' guy is, but it's not as cruel as the idea of a MPDG, in my opinion. I mean, sure, we have an idea definitely, but we don't try to impose them on real people (at least I like to think so; I can only speak for myself and my group of friends).
I can attest this is true for guys as well--most of the guys I know seem to NOT have a specific idea at all, and maybe this idea of a MPDG is what EVERY guy secretly wants or dreams about the same way EVERY girl dreams about Prince Charming, and maybe this whole MPDG thing is not even that big of a deal to make a movie about, I DON'T KNOW.
REGARDLESS of gender, if there are people out there who dream of guys or girls in the same way the lead dreams of his 'one true love' in this movie, and heck even if they didn't, I think stuff like this would still open up people's eyes and they would start to realize how unfair it is to do stuff like that--to think of people as 'more than just people' as John Green put it in Paper Towns. And I WANT to say 'Regardless of gender' because this story was written by a girl! By the every same girl who plays Ruby Sparks in the movie actually: Zoe Kazan.
But it's strange--every 'romantic' book that talks about girls as magical creatures who maybe aren't even real, ALL end in the SAME way--with the glaring fact that they ARE real and that they are human, and not just some two-dimensional art on a canvas.
I think it's strange how there are so many movies and books like this (Paper Towns included) and these are things that are primarily written for a male audience I think, because I don't think girls can relate to the lead--they can only relate to the girl itself, maybe---and the thing is, they ALL end in the same way, too: the girl just says "I'm REAL and I'm not just an IDEA!" and even then the guy doesn't seem to get it, and he just seems confused and offended that a girl can be different from the idea he has of her.
And this movie I think does an even better job that Paper Towns (sorry, John Green. I still love you, though) because in THIS movie, the guy actually DOES try to make her fit into his idea of her and well, ultimately when the shit hits the fan, and the 'meltdown' takes place, everything falls into place like I wanted it to. It was VERY well done in terms of acting and direction, by the way. It was fantastic. The actor (Zoe Kazan) was REALLY good in this particular scene. It must have been super challenging to do all that.*
All being said and done, I wasn't too happy about the ending itself, actually.
I mean, sure, it had a little bit of character development but...I don't know. Maybe he should have (**SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ FURTHER!!!**) met an Autumn after Summer like in 500 Days of Summer. I think I would have liked it more then.
EDIT: This is from Wikipedia:
"From early in the development she (Zoe Kazan) wrote the lead character Calvin with her boyfriend Paul Dano in mind. On the feminist aspects of the story Kazan explains she wanted to explore the idea of "being gazed at but never seen" where a woman is not properly understood but in a way that wasn’t unkind or alienating for men. She rejects the description of Ruby Sparks as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, calling it reductive and diminutive, whereas Ruby Sparks is about the danger of idealizing a person, of reducing a person down to an idea of a person."
Yes, to the 'reduction to an idea' part but no to the MPDG part because the idea of the girl she happened to pen down for Ruby WAS of a MPDG in my opinion. That's what my interpretation of a MPDG is, anyway.Rating: 2.5 on 5 stars.
And yes, I can be a critic too.
*Another movie example of this concept is 500 Days of Summer. EVERY guy I have met and who has admitted to watching the movie, LOVED it, but I personally thought it was just okay (maybe a 2 on 5). Also, do all the actors who fit into this role of a quirky/MPDG have to be called 'Zoe'?
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