abstract:The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is a stock character type in films. Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the term after seeing Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown (2005), describes the MPDG as "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that 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.
The smart and funnywriter Nathan Rabincoined the term ManicPixieDreamGirlto describe this archetypeafter seeing Kirsten Dunstin the movie “Elizabethtown.”