The defence The Sentimental Softie
“Sincerity is not manipulation.”
The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.
Back to trending 
Ruby Sparks
Comedy · Romance · Fantasy · 2012
Calvin is a young novelist who achieved phenomenal success early in his career but is now struggling with his writing – as well as his romantic life. Finally, he makes a breakthrough and creates a character named Ruby who inspires him. When Calvin finds Ruby, in the flesh, sitting on his couch about a week later, he is completely flabbergasted that his words have turned into a living, breathing person.
Movie details
Ruby Sparks
“She's Out Of His Mind.”
2012 Comedy · Romance · Fantasy 1h 44m
Critical arithmetic
One number, for now.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
TMDB
7.1 / 10
Community rating
Calvin is a young novelist who achieved phenomenal success early in his career but is now struggling with his writing – as well as his romantic life. Finally, he makes a breakthrough and creates a character named Ruby who inspires him. When Calvin finds Ruby, in the flesh, sitting on his couch about a week later, he is completely flabbergasted that his words have turned into a living, breathing person.
CriticWise case file
What this film says about your taste.
Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.
The archetype split
Who fights over Ruby Sparks?
For the defence
The Sentimental Softie
“You came to feel something, and you will.”
Read their case For the prosecution
The Cool Ironist
“Feeling things is a little embarrassing.”
Read their objectionThe split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.
Taste neighbourhood
Nearby on the taste map.
TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.
Sitting in Bars with Cake
Romance · 2023
Extrovert Corinne convinces Jane, a shy, talented baker, to commit to a year of bringing cakes to bars, to help her meet people and build confidence. But when Corinne receives a life-altering diagnosis, the pair faces a challenge unlike anything they've experienced before.
The Best You Can
Comedy · 2025
Cynthia Rand is a buttoned-up New Yorker married to a brilliant professor 25 years her senior. She begins feeling the effects of her husband’s advancing age on their relationship, just as her world is turned upside down by the arrival of sharp but chronically underachieving security guard Stan Olszewski in this smart rom-com that reunites Bacon and Sedgwick on screen for the first time in 20 years.
All of You
Romance · 2025
Laura and Simon have been best friends since college. Over the years, they've realized their bond is more than platonic. Can they—and should they—risk everything to explore a love that has existed all along?
Blind
Drama · 2017
A novelist is blinded in a car crash that killed his wife and several years later rediscovers his passion for life and writing when he embarks on an affair with the neglected wife of an indicted businessman.
Dirty Sexy Saint
Romance · 2019
Clay Kincaid hates the nickname 'Saint', he got for being too kind to stray animals and desperate people. Especially when it comes to women. With a rough and damaged past that has left him jaded, he doesn't do committed relationships. This is before he meets Samantha Jamieson, an heiress turned runaway in need of help. When she starts to work as a waitress at his bar, he discovers that she is someone truly special and amazing… someone that could warm his damaged heart.
Am I OK?
Comedy · 2024
Lucy and Jane have been best friends for most of their lives and think they know everything there is to know about each other. But when Jane announces she's moving to London, Lucy reveals a long-held secret. As Jane tries to help Lucy, their friendship is thrown into chaos.
How to Please a Woman
Romance · 2022
When her all-male house-cleaning business gets out of control, a mature woman must embrace her own sexuality, if she is to make a new life for herself.
Magic in the Moonlight
Comedy · 2014
Set in the 1920s French Riviera, a master magician is commissioned to try and expose a psychic as a fraud.
The Good House
Romance · 2021
When wry New England realtor Hildy Good rekindles a romance with her old high-school flame, Frank Getchell, it ignites long-buried emotions and family secrets that propel Hildy toward a reckoning with the one person she's been avoiding for decades: herself. Based on the best-selling novel by Ann Leary.
Love & Sex
Comedy · 2000
When her rather explicit copy is rejected, magazine journalist Kate is asked by her editor to come up with an article on loving relationships instead, and to do so by the end of the day. This gets Kate thinking back over her own various experiences, and to wondering if she is in much of a position to write on the subject.
Where it lives
Watch in your region.
Cinema release signals and current streaming, rental, and purchase options for your region.
Streaming availability data supplied by JustWatch.
Names above the title
The people responsible.
Cast & crew
Directed by
Jonathan Dayton · Valerie Faris
Written by
Zoe Kazan
Paul Dano
Calvin
Zoe Kazan
Ruby
Chris Messina
Harry
Annette Bening
Gertrude
Antonio Banderas
Mort
Alia Shawkat
Mabel
Deborah Ann Woll
Lila
Court is in session
Put Ruby Sparks on trial.
Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.
The prosecution The Cool Ironist
“The strings are showing.”
Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.