RUBY SPARKS (R) Novelist Calvin (Paul Dano) is in a rut. After making a big splash with his first book when he was only 19 years old, Calvin (we know he's cool because he types on a vintage typewriter) is now struggling with producing his follow-up 10 years later. His slump isn't contained to his professional career, though. Calvin is friendless and yearns to find true bliss in the romantic department. So, what's a bright, dweeby, self-loathing creative person to do? Conjure up the "perfect" woman, of course, which is exactly what Calvin does after dreaming about her. He then sets to literally writing her into his life and soon has an insta-Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG), Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan), all to himself.

What makes Ruby Sparks unique is how it subverts this male fantasy premise, incisively critiquing one of the most common and loathsome tropes in modern romantic comedies. Cameron Crowe has specialized in this kind of thing in his movies Almost Famous and Elizabethtown, contaminating countless impressionable males with the idea that the endearingly goofy, crazy girl he falls in love with will miraculously cure the pain nestled in his too-sensitive-for-the-world soul. Movies like the superficially amiable (500) Days of Summer also sell this regressive idea within a package of slick style and narrative smoke and mirrors. It's another Hollywood con, but one that has found real traction with some moviegoers and filmmakers. One of the major exceptions is the Charlie Kaufman scripted Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which partly explored a similar romantic dilemma, though refusing to perpetuate the lie that "the girl" was the easy ticket to wholeness.

In Ruby Sparks, Kazan (who also wrote the script) and Little Miss Sunshine directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris confront MPDG syndrome head on. It almost feels like a critique of (500) Days of Summer at times, eager to reveal the borderline sociopathy in Calvin's manipulations instead of embracing it. Darkness intrudes into the safe zone of this otherwise breezy rom-com, culminating in a rewarding moment near the end when Ruby lashes out. One wishes Kazan's script would have focused on those dark underpinnings more, as well as grounded the movie from Ruby's point of view. The inevitable consequence of that, however, is that Ruby Sparks would have transformed into a full-on horror movie. Ultimately, the filmmakers flinch, embracing a less complicated romantic finale. Despite a refreshing toe dipped in reality, Ruby Sparks unfortunately keeps things firmly in fantasyland.