My Inspiration List: Fantasy for people who don't like fantasy

The OTHER pandemic time loop movie + 2 weird great reads

In late summer 2020, I watched the movie Palm Springs (Hulu) every single weekend, or at least that’s how I remember it. Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti helped me stave off the Sunday blues and feel less alone. I hadn’t realized how relatable a time loop movie could be before I experienced life repeating in lockdown.

I didn’t know at the time that the loop would repeat over and over for a while, places opening up and then re-closing, masks being taken off and then put on again. But the next year, another movie about a guy contentedly living in a time loop until a girl disrupts his routine came to streaming. I don’t think the elongated pandemic was actually what gave us another time loop romantic comedy in 2021, but it certainly brings The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (Amazon) closer to home.

While it starts with the same premise, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things is sweeter and quieter than Palm Springs. It’s also a coming-of-age story, but its main characters (Kyle Allen and Kathryn Newton) are actual teenagers instead of stunted millennials. And where Palm Springs told us that what we do matters because our actions and decisions define and shape us even in a world where everything re-sets the next day, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things offers a complementary opposite truth: Nothing we do matters in a world where the people around you won’t remember any of your moments of connection.

It’s taken me three more paragraphs than I thought it would to get here, but what I’m trying to say is that sometimes a story with a fantastical twist can give us big, revealing, memorable insights on real life. I don’t watch or read much high fantasy. I loved escaping to Narnia and Oz and Middle-earth when I was a kid, but now, the movies and books that hook me are the ones that exist just a step or two outside of reality.