Ruby, la chica de mis sueños

Paul Dano plays Calvin, a dead sad and dead serious young writer, who has apparently used the royalties from his one hugely popular novel to finance an ultramodern iPod-themed house, and yet still chooses to use a typewriter. In the depths of his writer's block he fashions a few choice sentences about a woman - Ruby Sparks - who is his dream girl. His literature makes her literal, and Calvin is able to control her moods and actions by typing. It's reminiscent of Stranger Than Fiction with Will Ferrell, although Dano plays his part more like Jim Carrey might have done a decade ago: broad and physical, but with subtlety and pathos behind the mugging.

In a welcome tonal shift, Ruby Sparks moves gradually from hip romantic comedy to meta-horror - although it feels like there's a bit too much of the former, as I got the feeling that the zany pixie girl and self- hating writer stereotypes were being indulged more than they were being deconstructed. So what could have been a really interesting Woody Allen-esque philosophical rabbit-hole ends up cutting a far more familiar, shallower groove. But still, it's satisfying to see a cautionary flourish to go with the wish fulfilment.

Ruby herself is played by Zoë Kazan, granddaughter of the great Elia (On the Waterfront et al), with great energy and some charm. Kazan also wrote the film. So we have a film about art imitating life, written by the actor playing the title character, starring her real-life partner (Dano), and directed by the real-life partnership of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (best known for Little Miss Sunshine). So it's a helluva conundrum; but it's also well-made, sometimes funny and thought- provoking, and includes amusing cameos from Elliot Gould, Annette Bening, Steve Coogan and Antonio Banderas - so definitely worth a watch.

The film is a lot different from the trailer. It's very good, brilliant actually, fun and enjoyable but much darker. The film shows it as a light weight,playful film, not as a psychotic man who needs to control every small detail in his life including the woman he loves. It is truly brilliant, but go in with an open mind, don't leave the trailer to guide you through the film. I sound like I'm giving it a bad impression. I don't mean to, I came out with my dad and I absolutely loved it, we spent most of the journey home contemplating what we had seen. And in all truths, I want the mum's house, and their water slide, and more!

In an age of cheesy, predictable, and sometimes simply stupid romantic comedies, let's thank the romcom gods for the work of brilliance known as Ruby Sparks. The films stars Paul Dano as a man with a a huge amount of genius when it comes to writing fiction and an equally large amount of ineptness when it comes to relationships. He finds strong inspiration in a dream about a girl and quickly writes many pages about her, only to find the living, breathing, figment of his imagination in his kitchen. Although she seems the perfect girl in every way (he made her that way, after al), having a girlfriend that he can totally control with a few strokes of a keyboard comes with a price. As a writer myself, I have found a few books and movies in which I look at the basic idea of the plot and wonder, how did the writer come up with that? This was one of those plots. On top of it, brilliant quirkiness of both Dano and Kazan plays up the wonders of this film. To some this review up in two words: see it.

The unique Zoe Kazan wrote and stars in this quirky, fascinating, and original film about a writer with writer's block (Paul Dano, Kazan's real-life main squeeze) who invents the girl of his dreams, writes about her, and watches her become real.

While this film has been billed by reviewers and marketed by publicists as a "romantic comedy," in many ways it's not. It's both more and less. Less predictable, certainly, as the endings of modern romantic comedies are notoriously pat. More ... what? Strange? Edgy? Depressing even (at times)? Maybe all of the above. But ultimately upbeat.

The gifted Paul Dano has created a character - a young woman - who is exactly who he wants, or at least so he thinks. It's not until he meets his ex at a party 2/3 of the way through the movie that the audience really begins to understand what's going on. And it's not just hearts and flowers. But no spoilers here.

That Kazan pulled off both this original idea AND the ability to end it in a way that made sense yet left unanswered questions that should be unanswered is testimony to her screen-writing talents. Her roots here are strong: both of her screen writing parents and her famed grandfather Elia. But Zoe is also extremely appealing as the film's title character, showing a range of acting skills that could make her a star.

And for fun, we get Bening, Banderas, and Gould, all enlivening the proceedings.

Original movies are hard to find, and when you find them, often hard to watch. This film is both original and very watchable.

I liked the movie a lot. I felt very moved and intrigued both by the premise and the complications to move the story along.

Big but: The lead character, Calvin, is not believable as a "genius novelist" nor even as a pretty good one. Why? He has no idea how to make Ruby, whom he completely controls, subtle and complex the way any good novelist would his characters.

He paints her happy and sad, joyful and childishly clinging with such broad brush strokes he is an incompetent "inventor" of a character/person, let alone his dream girl. If you or I created an automaton, WE might swing back and forth to the extremes while trying to adjust his/her behavior. Calvin should be an expert not a tyro at subtle shades of behavior. Granted, if he got her just right, we would have no crisis to force the story to a resolution.

And the resolution is Hollywood sugar. In Europe or Israel, the hero would be left with the sad results of his failure. (He stares out to sea on a deserted beach to ponder what happened and his bleak future?) Here, the filmmakers insist we leave the theater feeling good about Calvin and Ruby.