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Dreaming of a male match for Zooey Deschanel, Natalie Portman in Garden State or, the original, Kirsten Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown, Drew from North Carolina asks:
Is there a male equivalent of a ‘manic pixie dream girl’?
For a while, the male equivalent was ‘Ryan Gosling‘. But now he seems to have stopped playing ukulele in the street, and started growing sinister facial hair, there is a gap in the lexicon. Manic pixie dream reader, please go to the comments and supply. ‘Jared Leto during his Oscar campaign’ is too long-winded.
PS Here’s Nathan Rabin, who concocted ‘manic pixie dream girl’, wishing he hadn’t.
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Tags: manic pixie dream boy, manic pixie dream girl, Nathan Rabin, tropes
Answer Me This! Podcast 
July 8, 2015 at 12:01 pm |
Got to be Chris Pratt, surely? Always hot and masculine yet funny and childish. (Not so much in Jurassic World, I admit).
July 8, 2015 at 11:19 am |
My first two thoughts were JGL and Michael Cera.
July 8, 2015 at 11:16 am |
Looking at the Wiki on MPDG, they suggest Augustus Waters from The Fault in Our Stars and Jesse from Pitch Perfect. I’d also think of some of the romantic male leads in Young Adult fiction, like Four from the Divergent series.
July 8, 2015 at 10:42 am |
I think there’s a definition issue with this question. If, according to the term’s creator, the MPDG is “a fantasy figure who exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” Then are we just changing the gender to MPDB or are we going to address the gender binary stereotypes implied in the definition?
Or are we just bringing it down to quirky love interest (male)? If so: Ducky from ‘Pretty in Pink’.
July 8, 2015 at 10:15 am |
If we’re looking for the same characteristics of a MPDG in dude form – Ezra Miller, maybe? I’m thinking in Perks of Being a Wallflower?
If we’re looking for a dudely stereotype like an MPDG, then I present Tom Hardy looking confused with puppies:
July 8, 2015 at 1:01 am |
JGL, maybe? (Joseph Gordon Levitt) Just me? Ok.
Multiple movies seem to proffer the schlumpy, manchild as the counterpart to the MPDG. He gets that uptight career woman in superpointy shoes and super pulled-back hair to “learn to loosen up and live a little”. These movies seem to all be directed by schlumpy manchildren, so I’d say the jury’s still out on that one.