For every Manic Pixie Dream Girl (or, the more vanilla romance-object, the blonde damsel in distress) there is some wonderful, stable, wealthy, heroic man waiting to give a woman exciting, expensive dates, a short courtship, a lavish wedding, and will take care of her and support her through all her trials and tribulations…. for no apparent reason.

Indubitably.

But is part of the criticism here, and correct if I’m completely misgauging the tenor of the OP, that the shallow male counterpart to MPDG would not himself be manic nor pixie? Because, you know, then it’d be gay.

Date with an Angel, the angel. Yes, I’m old school, but I just watched it.

Minutemen (disney channel movie), the girl who helps the time travelers. She literally is hot for this tiny 14-year-old boy who I thought was gay the whole movie, then remembered it was a Disney film.

That being said, I couldn’t stand in that movie how everyone was supposed to be these skeevy half-crazed mathematicians (at least one of whom didn’t supposedly bathe regularly), played by freakishly attractive, well-manicured, chiseled body-building actors.

Considering boyfriends, there’s Kevin Kline’s character in “French Kiss”. A movie I haven’t seen, but which could apply: Robert Redford in “The Horse Whisperer”? Although he probably wouldn’t be manic, but then again, manic men don’t really have the same positive effect as manic women (in movies). But John Hannah’s character in “Sliding Doors” would certainly qualifiy as manic and “saving a woman from brooding”.

he’s the subject, she’s the object. He exists to further her romantic narrative.

Doesn’t that make him the object and her the subject?

My understanding is that most of the narrative of chivalry focused on the masculine perspective, while the modern narrative comes from both perspectives (but rarely includes both perspectives in a single work). For every Manic Pixie Dream Girl (or, the more vanilla romance-object, the blonde damsel in distress) there is some wonderful, stable, wealthy, heroic man waiting to give a woman exciting, expensive dates, a short courtship, a lavish wedding, and will take care of her and support her through all her trials and tribulations…. for no apparent reason.

Sex and the City is the canonical example - Big is such an ideal man, but the show never actually explains what he sees in Carrie, who is perpetually broke, incessantly whiny, and emotionally destructive. That’s because his motives for being with Carrie aren’t important, he’s the subject, she’s the object. He exists to further her romantic narrative.

IIRC, that goes at least as far back as “courtly love” and the troubadors of the 14th and 15th centuries.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManicPixieDreamGirl

Either way, it’s a silly concept anyways, as any guy who tries to chase down magic pixie dream girls in real life will get burned by some really, really, really bad daddy issues, just like women who chase the studly outlaw biker will just get abused.

As I’ve seen pointed out, you have to distinguish between Clemintine-as-she-is and Clemintine-as-Joel-sees-her. Since much of the movie is spent inside Joel’s head, what you’re seeing is not necessarily the real girl.

As for male equivalent characters, the otherwise charming film Saved! rewards Jena Malone’s pregnant teenager for her emotional growth by giving her a cute, skateboarding, personality-free boyfriend who doesn’t mind at all that she’s having a baby at 16. He’s more Prince Charming than Manic Pixie, but he’s definitely more Dream than reality.

Yes, yes a thousand times yes! Awesome movie. I’m desperately in love with Audrey Tautou (which now makes me wonder if I’m wishing for a magic pixie dream girl of my own. Oops…) And I love it that the boy she ends up with is as nuts as she is.

There’s a great conversation going on at Punkass about stories that look at women’s relationships with other women, and the lack thereof. When we talk about these sexist tropes we’re usually talking about how women are positioned relative to men - that they’re rarely positioned homosocially at all is another problem. Where’s my manic pixie? Do I not get one because I’m a girl too?

For some reason I am thinking of drew barrymore. Doesn’t she end up in that role a lot?

How about Sam Shepard as the Dreamy Doctor who sweeps Diane Keaton off her feet in Baby Boom?

Or, more recently, Keanu Reeves as another Dreamy Doctor doing likewise for a much older Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give? (I remember being completely bewildered that Keaton would get serious about Jack Nicholson’s character when she already had a guy who was SO PERFECT.)

Oh, and another movie that depicts what might be, in other movies, a MPDG from her point of view: Liza Minnelli in The Sterile Cuckoo.