Review: ‘Ruby Sparks’

This quirky film from the helmers of Little Miss Sunshine is, on the surface, a charming and fun romp around the premise that a writer’s creation can become flesh. Underneath, it poses some serious questions about the male need to idealise and manipulate women.

Calvin is a writer whose first novel, written as a callow teenager, was a huge success. He’s now in his twenties and struggling to follow it up. When his shrink gives him a writing exercise, inspiration springs anew and he’s soon pounding out page after page on his typewriter (yes… a typewriter, unlikely as it may seem). The story’s heroine, the vibrant Ruby Sparks, soon consumes Calvin’s imagination.

Harry, Calvin’s brother, tells him he hasn’t written a real person. But the next morning Ruby is very much alive and well – in Calvin’s kitchen.

This Ruby can do everything a real woman does, yet Calvin can alter her destiny or her will just by sitting at his desk and writing her next move. He vows not to use this power and dives into the relationship with gusto. But the more Ruby becomes her own person, the more uptight Calvin gets. It isn’t long before his obsessive need for control re-emerges and he can’t keep himself away from the typewriter, adding lines to his doomed narrative to mould and shape Ruby into the woman he needs her to be…

I find myself torn with this film. The leads are great, with Kazan’s Ruby especially charming. I couldn’t help wanting her to break out of the mould though. Calvin’s strong controlling hand, for me, stifles the character, never allowing her to become the completely irrational being she showed the potential to be. And Calvin himself didn’t quite exude enough personality for me to believe him as the creator of anything interesting. But in a way this works because it leads the viewer to believe the character must have a rich, inner life – one that never finds its way to the surface.

It also irked me that Calvin uses a typewriter; which was too obviously a plot device and one that didn’t ring true. How much more fun could Calvin have had with Ruby if he’d been using writing software like Scrivener?

6/10