The Map of Tiny Perfect Things

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By India Bartram

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The Map of Tiny Perfect Things is a touching science fiction-romantic comedy hybrid that will leave you with a bittersweet longing to find the beauty in the ups and downs of life. The film is directed by Ian Samuels and the screenplay was written by Lev Grossman. It is available to stream on Amazon Prime.

The premise of this film is that teenager Mark and is living the same day over and over again. He thinks he is the only one who notices this, until he meets a girl, Margaret.

Now for the first good chunk of this film, you might be thinking to yourself: okay so this is just a teen 21st century rip-off of Groundhog Day. And that is what I thought too. For a while I felt that the film was trying too hard to be a quirky high school story with forced meet-cutes and many pop cultures references. But I found that there were moments sprinkled throughout that worked really well and had me intrigued.

For instance, one of the shining parts of this film was Kathryn Newton’s performance. She plays Margaret, the mysterious and edgy aspiring aerospace engineer. Although there were times when I felt the writing didn’t give her much to work with, Newton did a great job of playing the “manic pixie dream girl” trope without being a caricature of it.

The film of course explores the meaning and purpose of life, like most time loop films do. But this one brought up an idea that I found to be quite unique and very poignant. Through his search for a way to get out of the time loop, Mark discovers that some of the people in his life are just as “stuck” as he is. While people aren’t physically stuck in another dimension in reality, it’s a human phenomenon to feel lost or stuck in the trajectory of your life. This film reminds you that this isn’t permanent and other people are in your situation.

With all that being said I really didn’t get on board with this film until about halfway through. Mark makes a discovery about Margaret that turns the whole story on its head. Mark realizes that this isn’t his story. And the story becomes less of a high school rom-com, and more of a touching story about loss and appreciation of life, the good and the bad.

I would highly recommend this movie for anyone that already likes high school movies or romantic comedies. But, if that isn’t your thing I think it would be hard to see past the couple cliches and slightly cheesy bits of dialogue.