My Review of "The Map of Tiny Perfect Things"

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things is the latest movie that's come out exclusively on Amazon Prime in 2021. That's a great thing because we're pretty starved for new movie content in 2021. We're still awaiting all of the Warner Brother releases to come out on HBO. In the meantime, we're happy to watch pretty much anything to come out by big studios.

This movie is quite odd because Amazon Prime had just released a movie with a very similar premise two months ago called Palm Springs. That's when a guy gets caught in this infinite time loop and experiences the same day over and over again. He meets a girl that shares the same experiences as him in this time loop and falls madly in love with her.

Well this movie is pretty much the same exact thing as Palm Springs but with teenagers. This means there are a lot more dramatic rationale behind their aversion from going forward in life. Come to think of it it's the female protagonists in both movie that have issues in both movies and the male leads that have happy go lucky lives in their infinite loops. These movies are practically the same thing.

It starts with this guy named Mark who wakes up and seems to have these uncanny abilities to predict everything that's going to happen and he makes the most of it by doing tricks and whatnot. He's playing around with the unfortunate circumstances that happen around him.

During his daily fun he continually tries to woo a girl but can't seem to get with her no matter what he does. This all comes to a halt when a new girl comes into the picture that ruins his chances with the girl he's trying to get with. Obviously since he's in an infinite time loop this is extraordinary because she's totally unpredictable to him.

Eventually they spend some time together and you pretty much know what's going to happen in the end. As a young adult movie it's pretty formula. In a way this sort of reminds me more of another Amazon Prime movie that came out 2 months ago as well called Life in a Year. In some ways it reminds me of this movie more than Palm Springs even though it's a scene by scene carbon copy of Palm Springs.

The reason why it reminds me of Life in a Year is because of the male lead again tries to woo this female lead in a series of perfect moments. It's like the combined two movies that may have worked well for Prime and amalgamated them into this movie.

For those of us that like comfort movies it's not a bad thing. In terms of Amazon Prime as a movie studio this is not a good look. It just makes it seem like they're regurgitating the same stuff over and over again. This lacks innovation and people may get tired of it. Then again what do I know. A ton of the hallmark Christmas movies are virtually the same and yet people eat it all up.

I still had a good time with this movie though. Yes it's formulaic and absolutely predictable but it's comfortably predictable. The same sort of predictability that you see in romantic comedies. There's a level of comfort in movies where you know what's going to happen. Why else do people re-watch movies over and over again?

The problem I had with this movie is that some of the things that happen in this movie weren't really well thought out. There's this moment when Margaret, the love interest, discovers a map that Mark makes. It's incredibly detailed and maps out all of the things they've been doing throughout all of the days they've been together. Mark seems to want to hide this from Margaret. There's no way Mark would have had the time to draw all that in a day. Everything resets after the day is done. There's times when you see them taking notes and I'm like why are you even taking notes when you've memorized pretty much everything else that happens in the town.

I also wonder why they never take into consideration the butterfly effect when they make these type of Groundhog Day type movies. We know they understand how things are going to happen. When they save people or do something to change the outcome of what's about to happen shouldn't there be a butterfly effect that changes everything about the town? I haven't seen a movie that puts that perspective into place yet.

Overall, I thought that this movie was incredibly robotic but in a comfort way. It is still enjoyable if you like romantic comedies or Groundhog day type movies. It's becoming a genre of its own with so many different movies imitating this style of movie making. If you're going to copy movies put a bigger twist to it please. I have to give this movie a 6 out of 10. There is a lot more potential in this movie than they gave us.