Streaming Spotlight by Cindy Summers
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
Amazon Originals
Breeze rating from 1 to 4 palm trees, 4 being best.
“The Map of Tiny Perfect Things” is the story of a charismatic teenager Mark (Kyle Allen), who was stuck in a time loop endlessly living the same day. He was quite content with how he had perfected his never-ending day until he met Margaret (Kathryn Newton), who was also stuck in the same time loop. As they set out together to find all the tiny little things that make a perfect day, they also find some romantic chemistry and a special insight that could help them escape the day, if indeed that’s what they each actually want.
Mark was a carefree teenager who was conscientious and seemed to have quite a synchronistic morning catching the toast out of the toaster as well as the cup that fell off the table before hitting the floor. He also seemed to have psychic knowledge of people and events that happened throughout his day, but this was all due to the fact that he was stuck in a loop reliving the same day over at the stroke of midnight.
Mark learned to embrace the situation by believing he was meant to do something good, like cure cancer which was too difficult to do in just one day, so he focused his efforts on the little things like stopping someone from getting bird poop on their head. Of course it took dozens, maybe even hundreds of repeat days to get the timing right, but Mark seemed to be doing well in discovering little things that he could effect in positive ways with each repeat day.
The only downside Mark found in his repeat day was that it was the day that his father Daniel (Josh Hamilton) decided it was time for him to have a talk with his son Mark about what he planned to do with his life and future – a talk Mark had to experience over and over again, though in his reality there was no future, just the same day.
One day when Mark was working out how to get a girl interested in him by saving her from getting a beach ball smacked in her face at the community pool, another girl that was never in the loop before stepped in the way, deflected the ball and walked out of the pool to the convenience store across the street. Mark was shocked and knowing that there was something that changed, followed her over to the store to see if he could learn anything.
As it turned out, Margaret was also aware of the time loop, but had her own way of dealing with the day and left Mark to search for her for several days until he found her again to share a plan of together finding all the little perfect things they had each found in the loop. Mark was an artist, so drew a new map each day of the town and places they found in hopes of finding a pattern to break the cycle. Little did he know it was Margaret’s geometric theory that would become the key to understanding everything.
“The Map of Tiny Perfect Things” is similar to “Palm Springs” with its “Groundhog Day” scenario of being stuck in the same day, but instead of the being hedonistic and hopeless, it focuses on the simple heart-felt moments many people miss in daily life and finding ways of making the best of the situation by making positive impacts with each same day they do over.
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 1h 39m
