After 500 Days of Summer, I vowed that I would never watch Zooey Deschanel in a romantic comedy again. Not because I thought she was a bad actress, in fact she’s a pretty decent one, but because somewhere Hollywood has pigeon-holed her into the manic pixie dream girl archetype, and it drives me up the wall to see these characters over and over. You know, the ones who seemingly lack any motivation in their own lives except to act as catalysts for the male protagonist to go on a journey of self-discovery? (See also: Garden State, Eternal Sunshine, etc., etc.). The first movie where Zooey locked that role down was David Gordon Green’s All The Real Girls, which was a way better version of Summer. Plus, her singing career bugs me. That cotton song? Bleugh.
Luckily, Zooey wasn’t always the worst: there was a time when she wasn’t the romantic lead, but the deadpan best friend (The Good Girl), psychotic hippie chick (her amazing turn in Weeds), or unwilling love interest (Elf). Which has totally paved the way for the career of Lizzy Caplan, better known as the deadpan best friend Janis Ian in Mean Girls. Caplan has gone on to play the psycho hippie chick in True Blood, the disinterested love interest in Starz’s hysterical Party Down, and most importantly, has yet to do one single twee role as a manic pixie dream girl with some one-dimensional quirk. BUT: maybe that’s just me. Who would you guys rather spend the night out with: Deschanel or Caplan?
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Video of the Day: Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Sid and Nancy