Zoe Kazan has a brilliant solution to the complete lack of dignified, quality roles for women in films: write your own movie with a quality female role for yourself to star in. And while you’re at it, line up awesome directors skilled enough to shoot the film in a way that makes you look off-the-charts adorable. All I can say is, Brava Zoe! Just keep doing what you’re doing, and please don’t ever appear in a teen vampire movie or in any film with a title resembling “Spider-Man Reboot Part 15.”

Ruby Sparks is a nice little film, and Zoe Kazan is really effective in the title role. I enjoyed it, but felt that its charms were a tad shallow, and in the last analysis the film failed to make any significant impression on me. It struck me as a somewhat clever idea, but its execution was a little flat and rather unfocused. Even among films in current release, it totally pales in comparison to something emotionally similar like Safety Not Guaranteed, for example.

Part of the problem was casting Paul Dano, who is a flat, cold fish, with far too little presence to inhabit this kind of role effectively. He reminded me of Finch (a.k.a. “Shit-Break”) in American Pie, definitely not a good thing. I didn’t even believe that he was a writer, let alone a world-famous genius writer. But the screenplay is at fault as well. The failure to connect emotionally with Dano’s character stems primarily from his poor development in the script – indeed, his character never grows or changes, and his psychology is murky and uncompelling. This in turn hamstrings the film’s rather limited attempts to explore the relationship between psychology and creativity. In addition, there are all these supporting characters floating around – the mother, the step-father, the brother, the therapist, the ex-wife, Steve Coogan – but none of them contribute substantively to the actual story. They are like physical props, around which the two leads act out the one and only story line: Will Dano let her go, or won’t he? The cumulative effect of this is the story seems a bit empty in the end.

I also found the denouement to be kind of disappointing; without giving anything away, I’ll just say that with an idea like this there is a huge range of possible resolutions, ranging from banal to sublimely real to utterly fantastical. I’m afraid that for me it fell squarely on the banal side of the spectrum. And the ending relied (as my wife pointed out to me) on a Hollywood cliché that is currently crossing a line into serious overuse.

I feel somewhat bad about my reaction to this film, because I think there are far too few earnest, dignified, and good-natured films like this being made, regardless of their shortcomings. Any attempt is a good thing, and I’m not saying the film is not a pleasant diversion, it definitely is.  So I would say go see Ruby Sparks for some light fun, and do not burden it with any expectation that its tantalizing deeper themes will be explored or developed concurrently.