Sweet, upbeat, and continually entertaining, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things self-consciously riffs upon “the same day repeating” setup of Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow, albeit this time with two persons temporally trapped instead of one.
In pleasing contrast to the flick released last summer with the same premise, this latest Amazon Prime release does not err into unwholesomeness but is a teenage rom com at its best.
Mark (Kyle Allen) is a happy-go-lucky high school senior already in replay mode who does not seem particularly fussed about his high-concept circumstance. In fact, when we meet him, he’s just about got living this one day over and over down to an art.
He begins each morning seamlessly grabbing the toast as it pops, saving a falling glass from shattering, and pre-empting his younger sister’s snarky remarks. He then hits the street on his bike, grabs a coffee from the roof of a parked car, saves a pedestrian from ballistic bird doo and a cute girl from getting knocked into the public pool.
Oh, and for good measure, he also makes good natured use of his immunity from next day consequences by joyriding through town on industrial grade construction equipment and buying the winning lottery ticket just for the kick of seeing everyone’s reactions.
He just starts to wonder if all of this is supposed to amount to anything when his well polished routine gets interrupted by a girl who defies the pattern.
Margaret (Kathryn Newton), it turns out, is the one other person consciously experiencing the temporal anomaly. In convenient temperamental contrast to Mark, she has been dedicating her days (day?) to more purposeful activities like learning how to drive (with moderate success) and hunting down the neighbourhood’s missing dog (with very little).
He’s a goofball, she’s over-serious: it’s a match made in perpetual present odd-couple first-love heaven.
Of course, things can’t all go perfectly, or else it would be too short or too insubstantial (i.e., too Hallmark) of a movie.
Complications arise, and as they do Mark and Margaret must dig deeper, learn from each other, and grow as much into adulthood as into love.
It is a story you have seen before but, like a good meal you’ve eaten before, if it’s been long enough and you have the right appetite it doesn’t matter in the least.
I do not want to spoil the payoff, but speaking at a general level The Map of Tiny Perfect Things does not merely chart a course through the endlessly sunny lands of feel good, youthful optimism. It traverses this territory to be sure – the title takes its name from the protagonists’ assumed enterprise of discovering all those little beautiful things in a single day which too often go overlooked.
But there is also passage through shadowlands.
Acknowledging that even romantic love has its dark side – a birth often accompanies a burial – in this story the transition from adolescence to adulthood is articulated with the sober joy it often really involves.
In our finite fallen world, love is as ever imbued with the spectre of loss as loss is made bearable by love’s promise. In this film, the bitter balances the otherwise sickly sweet and renders it not only believable but also immensely satisfying.
Although it may not seem obvious from the point it begins pedalling blithely down the road, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, it turns out, not only pleases as it goes but actually ends up pointing us in the direction of someplace worth going.
And for my 98 minutes, even in a world where I get them only once, this makes a movie meaningful enough to enjoy time and time again.