Summer from 500 Days of Summer
The Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope became popular, overdone and finally named by Nathan Rabin in MYOF. I have to admit that I actually liked Garden State when I first saw it but the abundance of MPDG characters has rendered Natalie Portman's version egregiously awful. There are now MPDG deconstructions such as Charlize Theron on Arrested Development (who turns out to be mentally challenged) and the movie Ruby Sparks in which she's a fictional character come to life who refuses to be trapped in the MPDG type.
I will preface this by saying that I respected Zooey Deschanel when I saw The New Girl (only one episode) and realized just how much she was purposefully playing that character as repulsive. Superficially she's a MPDG in the tradition of Natalie Portman and the like, but in reality she's a bundle of nerves that makes George from Seinfeld seem sane in comparison.
So that brings us to 500 Days of Summer in which she is theoretically playing a MPDG. In fact, most of the jokes from this video - - are aimed at 500 Days of Summer (pancakes, She LISTENS TO THE SMITHS!!, etc.)
However, the more I watch the movie the more I realize that the point seems to be that she is NOT the MPDG that Gorden-Levitt wants her to be. The first time I saw it, I thought it was an interesting failure with several genius scenes (the expectations vs. reality scene is particularly brilliant) but now I see that the entire movie is really about his expectations vs. the reality and he never really sees things how she sees them. I still think it's a problem that we never actually see the relationship - at least not the bulk of the relationship (there are more than 100 days in there that are not dealt with) and so the movie jumps from the early days to the part where she tells him that she's Sid and he's Nancy.
Watching the movie the first time, there is in inclination to hate Summer, partially because she is depicted as a MPDG and partially because her post-breakup scenes make her seem needlessly cruel.
But repeat viewings make all those fantasy sequences so much more revealing. Of course, he only falls in love with her because she also loves the Smiths because that's really what he's looking for. And of course, he's the kind of guy to suddenly sabotage his job at the greeting card company because he doesn't give a shit about anyone there and he can play it off like he's the big hero.
One of my favorite scenes is when they are in the store and he is trying to do all the cute things that they did when they were first dating when she was being all MPDG (she acts like one at points in the movie but she isn't one) but every time he references an old joke she just kind of mumbles and gets irritated with him. As the audience, we don't know exactly when the relationship went from MPDG everything we do is cute to this point, but at a certain point, she stopped loving him and she stopped finding everything cute and every moment when he's trying to be funny or whacky is a moment when she is thinking SHUT UP!
This makes her assessment of the relationship as she's Sid and he's Nancy perfectly accurate since she is starting to dream of how nice it would be to wake up one morning and realize that she's stabbed him to death.
It also puts other scenes in the movie in sharp relief such as the moment when she is telling him about her terrible childhood and the narrator is telling us that Tom felt GREAT because he was really getting somewhere. He's not concerned about her. He's not listening to her. He's just crossing "tells me her secrets" off the relationship check list.
It's not a perfect movie. I really wish that Tom was not rewarded at the end with another brilliant girlfriend with a seasonal name. I also still kind of wish that they could make a movie called 500 Days of Tom in which we see Summer becoming increasingly annoyed with this guy. Still, I loved the fact that it is one of the few movies that incorporates romantic comedy tropes and then points out that one of the main reasons why this relationship failed was that the guy could not stop thinking about Summer as anything but a MPDG and that she has her own desires and life that can't include the petulant man-boy that is Tom.
So I don't know if this counts because I don't know how many people hate Summer per se. I know a bunch hate her on youtube (but everyone hates on youtube) and the narrative seems to want you to hate her as a heartbreaker when she slowly reveals herself to be NOT the MPDG that Tom thinks she is. But she's still an amazing character.
I will preface this by saying that I respected Zooey Deschanel when I saw The New Girl (only one episode) and realized just how much she was purposefully playing that character as repulsive. Superficially she's a MPDG in the tradition of Natalie Portman and the like, but in reality she's a bundle of nerves that makes George from Seinfeld seem sane in comparison.
So that brings us to 500 Days of Summer in which she is theoretically playing a MPDG. In fact, most of the jokes from this video - - are aimed at 500 Days of Summer (pancakes, She LISTENS TO THE SMITHS!!, etc.)
Click to viewHowever, the more I watch the movie the more I realize that the point seems to be that she is NOT the MPDG that Gorden-Levitt wants her to be. The first time I saw it, I thought it was an interesting failure with several genius scenes (the expectations vs. reality scene is particularly brilliant) but now I see that the entire movie is really about his expectations vs. the reality and he never really sees things how she sees them. I still think it's a problem that we never actually see the relationship - at least not the bulk of the relationship (there are more than 100 days in there that are not dealt with) and so the movie jumps from the early days to the part where she tells him that she's Sid and he's Nancy.
Watching the movie the first time, there is in inclination to hate Summer, partially because she is depicted as a MPDG and partially because her post-breakup scenes make her seem needlessly cruel.
But repeat viewings make all those fantasy sequences so much more revealing. Of course, he only falls in love with her because she also loves the Smiths because that's really what he's looking for. And of course, he's the kind of guy to suddenly sabotage his job at the greeting card company because he doesn't give a shit about anyone there and he can play it off like he's the big hero.
One of my favorite scenes is when they are in the store and he is trying to do all the cute things that they did when they were first dating when she was being all MPDG (she acts like one at points in the movie but she isn't one) but every time he references an old joke she just kind of mumbles and gets irritated with him. As the audience, we don't know exactly when the relationship went from MPDG everything we do is cute to this point, but at a certain point, she stopped loving him and she stopped finding everything cute and every moment when he's trying to be funny or whacky is a moment when she is thinking SHUT UP!
This makes her assessment of the relationship as she's Sid and he's Nancy perfectly accurate since she is starting to dream of how nice it would be to wake up one morning and realize that she's stabbed him to death.
It also puts other scenes in the movie in sharp relief such as the moment when she is telling him about her terrible childhood and the narrator is telling us that Tom felt GREAT because he was really getting somewhere. He's not concerned about her. He's not listening to her. He's just crossing "tells me her secrets" off the relationship check list.
It's not a perfect movie. I really wish that Tom was not rewarded at the end with another brilliant girlfriend with a seasonal name. I also still kind of wish that they could make a movie called 500 Days of Tom in which we see Summer becoming increasingly annoyed with this guy. Still, I loved the fact that it is one of the few movies that incorporates romantic comedy tropes and then points out that one of the main reasons why this relationship failed was that the guy could not stop thinking about Summer as anything but a MPDG and that she has her own desires and life that can't include the petulant man-boy that is Tom.
So I don't know if this counts because I don't know how many people hate Summer per se. I know a bunch hate her on youtube (but everyone hates on youtube) and the narrative seems to want you to hate her as a heartbreaker when she slowly reveals herself to be NOT the MPDG that Tom thinks she is. But she's still an amazing character.