"...We're All Looking For The Fourth Dimension..."
A beautifully scripted and played-out film and released just in time for Valentine's Day mush celebrations – February 2021's "The Map Of Tiny Perfect Things" on Amazon Download/Stream is a better-than-a-romantic-comedy movie idea that pitches 'The Perks Of Being A Wallflower' against 'Groundhog Day'.
And despite the pitfalls for a movie that would take on either of those wee mini filmic masterpieces – "Map..." comes up trumps in both cases. It's a sort of Sci-Fi Rom Com set on Planet Earth with its Heart and Soul firmly looking up to and longing for magic in the stars.
The two principal leads Kyle Allen and Kathryn Newton play Mark and Margaret – college lovers who don't know they're on a collision course towards each other - or even that hanging out together will enrich their locked-in worlds - maybe even save their sorry judgemental/philosophical nerd-like asses.
Happily predicting every little movement that will happen in his sunny day from the moment he wakes up and his mom drives off to work to his eventual plonking on his suburbia bed – Mark is inexplicably on a 24-hour-loop that melts and resets a second after midnight back into the same day – again and again and again.
And at first – when we meet him – the tall medium-attractive eighteen-year old is apparently happy with this. He repeats his younger sister Emma's "loser" taunt each breakfast for fun (not with malice) while hurting for her three-nil soccer game loss later that afternoon (cool role for Cleo Fraser). His dropped out of a good job now stay-at-home Dad (Josh Hamilton) is trying to write that Civil War novel he's always promised himself he would write, and later on, give his son that awkward parent-child chit-chit on the birds and the bees (but who is the smarter one in the room).
Mark will also drop in on his same-age pal Henry who seems incapable or unwilling to ever leave his game console bedroom as he gets character-trashed every time (if only he knew about that grenade throwing trait that will bring him to the key). Yet despite Mark's carping sister, dreaming Dad, shadowy mum that he never gets to hug and Henry's savvy-yet-somehow-useless advice on girlfriends and maps and life in general (wittily played by Jermaine Harris) – Mark is a positive soul that isn't as yet jaundiced or trapped by his predicament. If anything, he seems even smug in his mastering of unfolding events, whistling his way through it – getting right what he got wrong the repeated day prior.
So with each 24-hour stretch, Mark breezily catches falling crockery, nabs a carton of coffee from off of the roof on a stationary car as he passes on his bicycle, only to deposit the finished latte sup into a passing garbage truck at the exact moment both opportunities present themselves. He pushes a pedestrian back to avoid a falling bird poop - drops down a middle-aged lady's skirt with a steel thongs he's brought for just that purpose, her unwieldy dowdy garment having become wedged behind without her noticing - a potentially embarrassing moment that would have people laughing at her - and so on. Despite the opportunity to hurt and get away with it without consequences, Mark chooses not to.
But then one day by the local pool - a gorgeous young woman of his age catches a beach ball that should have hit another girl he's been trying to get the attention of. Then this mystery girl with her golden ringlets (a luminous Kathryn Newton) just waltzes out of frame – like she doesn't want to be caught - let alone be even spoken to. Could it be that someone else is trapped in this loop with him - and does she offer a way out? Maybe even have an answer as to why they're the only two people in the entire world rotating days in an inescapable time anomaly in the first place?
Without giving too much away, the story unfolds in ways you don't expect and the chemistry between the two leads is real, sweetly handled and like all good movies – something you become seriously invested in. Mark and Margaret start a journey where they begin to discover everyday beauties – seemingly ordinary yet pretty things that they hadn't seen in their own self-centred and egocentric loops. And this is where the movie really starts to fly.
The thing is that the writer had to spot all of these moments (there is a lot of them) and then set them up to be filmed - so scene after scene unfolds with wondrous stuff. And combined with a really pretty acoustic score from Tom Bromley that lifts up key scenes when they really need it - the effect at times is quite magical. There is also an unfolding of love – a scene where Mark sets up a fantasy set for Margaret – a handmade cardboard realisation of a career dream (Margaret longs for NASA and space exploration and she also seems to know a lot about the Fourth Dimension).
For sure, the ideas are directly linked to and lifted from other movies we movie nerds know well (they are actually referenced throughout the film) - but for sheer inventiveness and a genuinely joyful feel and approach to life's ups and downs and young love - "The Map Of Tiny Perfect Things" is a breath of fresh air. It doesn't really have a cynical bone in its body.
I suppose some may find that just a tad too cosy. But I thought it was gorgeous and Writer Lev Grossman and Director Ian Samuels are to be congratulated for pulling off such a pick-me-up coup in a 2020 world so full of loss, hurt and negativity.
And it will surely make the golden-haired Kathryn Newton (the kind of gal every 18-year lad wants to fall in love with) an even bigger star.
Lovely and then some...
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