Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie FarisCast: Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Chris Messina, Annette Bening, Antonio Banderas, Aasif Mandvi, Steve Coogan, Toni Trucks, Deborah Ann Woll
It's perhaps no coincidence that the long-awaited second feature from the directors of Little Miss Sunshine centers on a novelist suffering from writer's block, but the film itself reveals no sense of artistic stasis, proving vital and responsive to the nervy improbabilities of co-star Zoe Kazan's original screenplay. It's unlikely that commercial lightning will strike twice for Fox Searchlight to the same degree it did after the distributor picked up Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' debut six years ago, but the genuinely romantic core and Harvey-like fantastical element suggest real box-office potential to be tapped equally among young men and women. Inspired by the Greek myth of the sculptor Pygmalion who fell in love with one of his creations, only to see it come to life, Kazan, a prolific playwright whose first produced script this is, imagines a situation in which an L.A.-based novelist's character suddenly materializes before his eyes and behaves exactly as he writes her. He finds himself to be the ultimate puppetmaster, not only on the page but in real life; if he wants her to be loving and obedient, fluent in French or a great cook, she will be all that, whatever he wants.
In contemporary Hollywood, it's easy to imagine a single-mindedly raunchy variation on this idea in the hands of someone like Adam Sandler or Judd Apatow. Fortunately, the filmmakers here have something less obvious and more heartfelt in mind, using the patently far-fetched premise to play with ethical ideas about the extent of any person's control over others and of dealing with an idle fantasy becoming reality.
Paul Dano plays brainy, bespectacled Calvin, who scored a literary sensation of nearly The Catcher in the Rye proportions at 19 and now, a decade later, finds the creative well stiflingly dry. When his agent and others try to reassure him that he's a genius, Calvin snaps, “Don't use that word,” while his shrink (Elliott Gould) gives him a one-page writing assignment in the hope of getting him out of his rut.
But, not for the first time, all it takes for a man to be inspired is the right woman, who in this case is Ruby (Kazan), an offbeat redhead with luminous blue eyes Calvin meets in a park. Immediately, the words start to flow again as he works on his Olympic portable. “It's almost like I'm writing to spend time with her,” he marvels as the pages begin to accumulate. Suddenly, however, she materializes in his apartment, his imaginary muse suddenly flesh and blood before his eyes. The most conventional scenes, in which Calvin has his brother Harry (Chris Messina) over to convince him that Ruby's for real, are also among the funniest. It's Harry who challenges Calvin to write something to see if Ruby follows suit. When, just short of the story's halfway point, Calvin finally accepts the reality of the power he has over his dream girl, he vows, “I'll never write about her again.”
Having removed the leash to allow the romance to proceed on an equitable footing, Calvin reluctantly drives Ruby up the coast to Big Sur to meet his mother (Annette Bening), a radiant latter-day hippie who lives in a lushly overgrown Eden with her extravagantly friendly artist lover (Antonio Banderas). While Ruby, Harry and the latter's wife (Toni Trucks) embrace the hedonistic lifestyle, Calvin withdraws into himself. Once they're back home, and with Calvin no longer writing, Ruby develops an independent streak, wanting more space and time apart. After the depressed Calvin responds by returning to the keyboard to manipulate her back into his arms, she tilts to the opposite extreme and becomes a pathetically dependent wreck.
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