“The Map of Tiny Perfect Things” is a 2021 sci-fi romantic comedy movie directed by Ian Samuels, adapted from Lev Grossman’s short story of the same title. The film promises to be an enjoyable and delightful watch for all ages. Kyle Allen and Kathryn Newton star in the movie as Mark & Margaret, two teenagers who experience the same day repeating itself again and again due to a mysterious time loop.
The opening scene features a teenage boy named Mark who wakes up just as his mother leaves for work. It appears to be a fine sunny day and everyone in the city is going about their work. However, for Mark, things are very different due to an unknown cause. He has been stuck in an infinite time loop. For God knows how long.
Every night after 12, he wakes up to the same day and the same things happen around him. In fact, mark has perfected his daily routine through repeated iterations of the same loop. After greeting his family members, he effortlessly echoes their words at the perfect time. While out in the neighborhood. He is able to help other people anticipating when the things exactly will.
He helps people with finding missing keys, hitching a ride on the back of a truck and giving directions to a woman without being asked. He even takes a bulldozer for a ride while construction workers are on a break. One person he has become particularly interested in is Phoebe, a girl who he helped with the directions.
Mark seems to have developed a crush on her and goes to the community pool to meet her. While there, he saves her from being hit by a beach ball and the two begin to. Mark walks Phoebe home and before parting ways, asks her to hang out sometime, however she bluntly refuses seeking comfort. Mark visits his best friend Henry, who is playing a video game where his character dies and responds repeatedly.
This prompts Mark to wonder what it would be like if he could have a do-over in life and uses skills to help others in need. He imagines using this power to prevent accidents, help people and generally make the world a better place. However, Henry warns him that with infinite possibilities. Infinite ways to fail, and that if he were to become stuck in the loop, he would never be able to move on from it.
After waiting for midnight, mark experience is the same day again due to the time loop. He follows his usual routine and goes to the community swimming pool to meet Phoebe once more. However, this time another girl named Margaret unexpectedly saves Phoebe before he can. Ms. Shocks Mark as someone has changed his daily routine.
First time since the loop began. So he tries to follow Margaret, but only finds a flyer for a missing dog that she dropped before driving away. Mark calls the number on the flyer, but it belongs to someone else for the next few days. He continues looking for Margaret around the city, but she is nowhere to be found.
It’s almost as if. She is a ghost. However, one evening Mark spots someone leaving a generous tip at a diner and assumes it must be her. To his amazement, he does find her and they strike up a conversation as they talk. Mark discovers that Margaret is also experiencing the same time loop that he is with this new found connection.
The two spent time together and Mark shares some amusing coincidences he has observed during his many loops. Later when Margaret receives a call and has to leave, mark asks for her phone number. They’re the only ones aware of the anomaly. In the subsequent loops, mark starts to find joy in the routine and begins to experiment with different hairstyles, sending pictures of himself to Margaret, hoping for a response.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t reply, leaving him feeling dejected. Nevertheless, mark persists and asks her to meet up. To which she agrees during their meeting. The two share their respective experiences of living through the time loop. Mark expresses his desire to pursue art school while also mentioning his father’s recent decision to quit his job and write a book on the Civil War.
Margaret on the other hand, talks about her ambition to work as a mission specialist for NASA and shares her struggles in finding a missing dog. She also takes Mark to a serene lake where they witness a rare sight of a kingfish or catching a fish. Margaret shares that she first saw it while searching for the missing dog.
Even though it’s pointless, their conversation is interrupted. When Margaret receives a call from someone named Jared, she drops Mark off at his home before heading out to meet Jared. In the next iteration of the time, loop, mark and Margaret spend their day watching a group of skaters perform one skater in particular, a young girl is ridiculed by the others until she shows them a trick.
They have been failing at impressing everyone. Mark also teaches her how to drive a road roller The hell’s. In the midst of all this, mark asks Margaret about Jared, to which she responds that he’s a med student and nothing more. As the day goes on, mark ponders. If the time loop is about appreciating all the perfect random moments that life has to offer, Margaret is skeptical, but he suggests that they should look for all the perfect random things happening in their town on that day.
Mark believes that by doing this, they can find meaning in their situation. Hearing His last statement, Margaret, is finally. The two. Then begin searching for the moments of perfect beauty throughout the day and compiling a list of them. They discover rare moments such as traffic being stopped by a turtle crossing the road, an elderly couple playing chess.
It’s not perfect. That’s boredom. Incarnate, a pair of wings on a van, perfectly aligning with a man. And a construction worker playing the piano beautifully. One day Margaret decides to teach Mark algebra, claiming that she cannot hang out with someone who doesn’t understand logarithmic functions. Oh God, this plot is sinking fast.
After spending the entire day together, she receives her regular call from Jared and prepares to leave. Mark asks her to skip meeting Jared for one day, but she dismisses him and leaves the next day. Mark tries to search for information about Jared on the internet, but finds nothing helpful. He just learns about some sicko from Subway, feeling sad.
He goes to his friend Henry and confides in him about his recent feelings. The latter, who is unaware about the whole time loop thing suggests that Mark take Margaret somewhere special to show her that they have a genuine connection taking his friend’s advice. Mark takes Margaret to his school gym where he has set up a mockup of Tranquility base.
The two of them spend the day pretending to be astronauts, which makes Margaret very happy. At one point, mark tries to confess his feelings for. But he hesitates and instead invites her to ride his bike around the school. Later on, they return to Mark’s house and wonder about how they always wake up at the same time as they look at the pictures.
He mentions that his mother works at night, which means he barely gets to see her. Soon after Margaret finds a map in which he has mentioned all the perfect moments they have experienced together. Mark is embarrassed about the map and admits that he draws it every. But Margaret finds it amusing and encourages him to pursue his passion for art as they come closer.
Mark tries to kiss her in the heat of the moment, but Margaret avoids it saying she only wants to be friends. This leaves Mark seriously disappointed, but he accepts her decision. They spend the rest of the day together before Margaret leaves at 6:00 PM as usual. In the morning when Mark wakes up, he inquires about his mom for the first time.
Later that day, his father, Daniel, confronts him about his future plans, but Mark is frustrated, so he simply rants about his dull life. He also calls his dad hypocritical for not supporting his dreams while he himself quit his job to become a writer. Afterwards, mark talks to his younger sister, Emma, who reveals that their father was actually fired from his.
And was too embarrassed to admit it. Moreover, Daniel wants to send Mark to art school, but due to the weak financial condition of the family, his hands are tied. Hearing all this, mark becomes upset as he shouted at his father earlier, without knowing the actual reason. In the afternoon, he goes to meet with an algebra professor at school to discuss the cause of the time.
Loop. Mark presents his list of theories saying it’s for his assignment, and the professor helps him eliminate the ones that are unlikely. Finally, they come to the conclusion that a singularity could be the. Of the temporal anomaly and that if they could escape the singularity, they could also escape the time loop.
As the time loop continues, mark grows increasingly disillusioned with the idea of searching for perfect moments in their small town. He tells Margaret that she shouldn’t trivialize things and stop trying to distract him from the truth. Margaret misunderstands his frustration and thinks he’s upset because she didn’t kiss him in an effort to lift mark spirits.
She takes him to a show. Where they spent the day smashing things. Eventually they lie down and Mark reveals his plan to escape the time loop by leaving the country. He says that what they have now isn’t really living and that they’re stuck with everyone else who never accomplishes anything, feeling dejected.
Margaret hesitantly agrees to his plan. The next day, the two by plane tickets to Tokyo and board the plane with high hopes. Mark is convinced that if they can leave town, they can break free from the time loop and save the world. He puts on an eye mask to relax, but when he removes it, he realizes that Margaret is no longer on the plane.
He frantically tries to find her, but it’s too late. Margaret is backed out at the last moment due to nervousness. Meanwhile, mark spends the rest of the flight alone drawing pictures of the small perfect moments he and Margaret shared together. One of his drawings is of Margaret in a spacesuit. When the plane crosses the international Dateline, mark holds his breath in anticipation.
However, The next second, he again wakes up in his bedroom indicating that his plan has failed. In the next time, Luke Mark makes a conscious decision to shift his focus away from his own desires and towards other people. He reaches out to his father and expresses an interest in learning about the Civil War, showing a newfound curiosity in his family’s history.
He also attends his younger sister Emma’s football game and witnesses her scoring a goal that she hadn’t scored in previous loops when he wasn’t there. Later, mark spends time with an elderly couple playing chess and appreciates the skills of the construction worker playing the piano. In the afternoon, he joins some skaters attempting a move, but it leads to a fall and an injury.
As a result, he is taken to the. There as Mark is passing his time nonchalantly, he suddenly spots Margaret curious about her reason for visiting. Mark silently follows her to a patient’s room and what he sees there makes him speechless. It turns out Margaret visits her mother who is dying of cancer, and Jared is a medical student looking after her.
This makes Mark realize that he is not the main focus of the story, but rather it is Margaret who holds the center stage. He also realizes that this has nothing to do with Subway. As the day progresses, Margaret feels the weight of her regrets and missed opportunities. In her relationship with Mark, she wakes up alone in her house and thinks of her sick mother, whom she visits at the hospital.
Margaret confides in her mother about how she ruined her relationship with Mark, but the old woman reassures her that it’s. Is never too late to make things right As she leaves the hospital. Margaret notices the dog that she has been searching for. She thinks about returning it to its owner, but instead goes to see Henry there.
Margaret introduces herself as Mark’s friend and helps him win a video game by using a special weapon. That’s how games work. She discusses how the concept of. Death, whether in real life or a game is distressing. Nevertheless, avoiding the experience of losing someone would ultimately lead to losing oneself deep at that moment.
Henry initiates the game and reveals a map triggering a sudden and profound realization for Margaret. Following this, she returns home and creates a three-dimensional model of the perfect moments in town using. Once Margaret is done, she notices that the shadow cast by the model creates an image of a four-dimensional cube with a missing vertex.
She calculates that the final event will happen at 7:00 PM at the community pool. String theory y you get it. The following day, Margaret wakes up early to visit her mother at the hospital. She feels overwhelmed and tearful believing that if she finds the last perfect moment, the time loop will. But that also means losing her mother.
Hearing this, Margaret’s mother consoles her reminding her to cherish life and all the moments she’s been given as the clock ticks towards 7:00 PM Margaret arrives at the community pool where she finds Mark sitting alone. She sits beside him, acknowledging that he was right. All along the perfect moments were connected in a pattern.
She also mentions that there was one missing moment, which is needed to end the. Mark admits that he saw her at the hospital and promises not to take her away from her mother. In response, Margaret confesses that she wished for time to stop when she found out about her mother’s illness and the loop may have been a manifestation of her desire, but she now believes that Mark was caught up in the loop too in order to rescue her.
Feeling relieved. Margaret finally leans in and kisses Mark creating the missing perfect moment that. Margaret visits her mother at the hospital and bids her farewell for the last time. Later, she and Mark wait outside nervous about what will happen. When Mark’s watch strikes midnight, it starts to rain indicating that the time loop has ended, the film ends when they finally return the lost dog to its right, flown, or in the morning.