The camera alongside with him as he slides through the neighborhood with the dexterity of a dancer in “La La Land” (not for nothing is the spindly actor next set to appear in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story”). The opening passage kicks things off with time-loop montage: Mark wakes up to another drab variation on the same morning, shrugs off his nagging dad (Josh Hamilton, in a watered-down variation of his “Eighth Grade” turn) and smarmy younger sister (Cleo Fraser), then speeds through the day anticipating the movements of people around the neighborhood.
Grossman and director Ian Samuels (“Sierra Burgess Is a Loser”) take an earnest approach to the ambivalent cycle that Mark has been enduring long before the movie starts. But while “Palm Springs” took a vulgar detour into the nature of monogamy, “The Map of Tiny Perfect Things” lingers in a sunny coming-of-age dance that suffers from a “Groundhog Day” syndrome of its own.
New Movies: Release Calendar for July 22, Plus Where to Watch the Latest FilmsĪ History of Unsimulated Sex Scenes in Cannes Films, from 'Mektoub' to 'Antichrist'ġ9 Best Erotic Thrillers, from Adrian Lyne to Brian De PalmaĪbove all, the setup places the movie in the shadow of 2020’s “Palm Springs,” itself a quirky two-hander about two people inadvertently trapped together on the same infinite day. 'Thirteen Lives' Review: Ron Howard's No-Frills Cave Rescue Drama Has Too Much Air, Too Little Depth “The Map of Tiny Perfect Things” folds that same approach into a quirky two-hander about Mark (Kyle Allen) and Margaret (Kathryn Newton), two ambling 17-year-olds who discover they’re fated to repeat the same day in their boring little town. Both movies used the time-loop conceit to explore the existential dread of teen life. The movie plays like a hybrid of several recent variations: Like 2017’s drama “Before I Fall,” it’s a slick YA adaptation (sci-fi writer Lev Grossman wrote the screenplay off his short), it has some tonal similarities to the horror-comedy “Happy Death Day,” released that same year. The latest to take the rom-com approach, “ The Map of Tiny Perfect Things,” offers an agreeable kind of breezy, soul-searching variation, but can’t break free of the overwhelming meta impression that we’ve seen this all before. Often, the deja vu of watching these movies mimics the predicaments of their characters, even when they’re halfway decent.
Nearly three decades after Bill Murray got stuck in a time loop until he became a better man, the concept has spawned so many iterations that it basically exists as its own genre, mixed and mashed with other tropes to reanimate a familiar routine.
Another year, another “Groundhog Day” rip-off.