Pygmalion.  My Fair Lady.  Born Yesterday.  Pretty Woman.  Trading Places.  She’s All That.  The the original Pygmalion myth — and it’s themes of personal identity and the perils of idolizing something you’ve created — has been a go-to story for ages.  You’d think there wouldn’t be a single new way to spin it, but Ruby Sparks manages to breathe life (ahem) into this classic story.  While it may be more fairy tale than fable, the Ruby Sparks can proudly stand beside the best of these re-interpretations thanks to a brilliant performance and screenplay by Zoe Kazan (It’s Complicated) and a skilled touch by co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine).

Calvin (Little Miss Sunshine‘s Paul Dano, all awkward limbs and palpable neuroses)  is a twenty-something has been.  An enfant terrible that published THE great american novel as a teen, he’s now living off his past successes.  Great house, tons of money; livin’ the dream, right?  Well, not really.  Calvin is a loner that is probably one step away from going full Hugh Hefner, The Later Years.  With Calvin’s inability to form connections with others, his only real friend is his brother.  When Calvin has a writer’s block — perhaps due to the fear of never living up to his earlier work — his psychiatrist (Elliott Gould) has him write about Ruby Sparks, a girl Calvin has been having dreams about.  A girl that doesn’t exist.  But when Calvin throws himself into the task, the unthinkable happens; Ruby appears in his home, as if she’s been there all along.  Ruby is the perfect girl for today’s twenty-something slacker/hipster guy.  She’s beautiful, funny, loving and sweet.  Call her the Manic Pixie Dream-To-Reality Girl.

As the film progresses, Calvin goes through the emotions you’d expect: disbelief, fear, denial.  But when he realizes that others can see her too, he accepts her as his own.  Things get even freakier when Calvin realizes that whatever he writes, she will become.  Holy Weird Science, Batman!  Since Calvin’s issues didn’t disappear when Ruby makes the scene, his problems  with live, the universe and everything draw the story along.  Hey, otherwise we’d have a 30 minute short, tops.  And that’d be a shame, because the actors in Ruby Sparks give absolutely brilliant performances, from the stars to the bit players.  It’s easy to get those performances if you stock your film with fine actors, as Dayton and Faris have done.  Ruby Sparks reads like a Who’s-Who of enjoyable actors.  Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development), Deborah Ann Woll (True Blood), Steve Coogan (Tropic Thunder), Aasif Mandvi (The Daily Show)…not to shabby a supporting cast.  Add on Annette Bening and Antonio Banderas as Calvin’s free spirit mom & her equally New Age-y chainsaw-artist boyfriend, and you’ve got a movie that I worried wouldn’t be able to live up to it’s pedigree.  Lucky, the story, editing and pacing of the film all come together with these performances to give audiences an entertaining film.

Paul Dano is especially moving as Calvin.  Dano isn’t afraid of digging deep into Calvin’s neuroses, or of making Calvin such an introverted self-hating narcissist that he’s downright unlikeable at times.  In fact, Dano’s performance is so good I first hated parts of the film, until I realized I was so ticked because the actor affected me, which is exactly what he was supposed to do.  And as Ruby, the flesh-and-blood creation of Calvin’s dreams, Zoe Kazan gives a performance that seems effortless.  Ruby may be a creation, her emotions are 100% real.

You don’t have to be a twenty-something slacker to enjoy Ruby Sparks.  Will it help?  I’m not sure.  Perhaps staring into the face of their own personal hells would be too much for some.  But for people who aren’t afraid of seeing how a love can go up, down and all around, this is a perfect fairy tale.