(500) Days Of Summer

Desire and reality are two forces that rarely seem to mix well. It's that whole oil and water thing. We want what we desire, believe it is attainable, yet in the end most will find only disappointing results. Which is sad, but made all the worse when you know from the beginning that what you want won't be what you get. And thus we delve into the little indie rom-com, (500) Days of Summer. Utilizing a time hopping narrative, we are told the story of a young man who falls in love with the girl of his dreams, Summer. In a traditional rom-com, there would be little doubt one could guess the outcome of the relationship without ever seeing the film, and the same would go for (500) Days of Summer if that damned narrator didn't shoot that idea out of the water in the first few minutes. And knowing the end doesn't ruin it, but forces the viewers to hope beyond reason that what they know to be true is false, which is kind of the point. I credit the writers, Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter, for using the disjointed narrative perfectly, getting both the good and the bad of the Tom/Summer relationship almost simultaneously. A couple of scenes are so great that you wish you could have watched a film entirely composed of like scenes. One is a dance number that goes on long and ends hilarious, pushing past cute and tiresome into funny. The other is shown in split screen, detailing what Tom, our main character, expects to happen at a party with Summer and what actually takes place. Again, desire and reality mixing to ill effect. But while the writing was solid, so was the acting. Zooey Deschanel plays her cute and funny and wonderfully weird role perfectly, making a great pairing for Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He is an actor who picks his roles carefully, winding up in a diverse and solid group of pictures, which one might have scoffed at the idea back when they were watching him on 3rd Rock from the Sun. So while desire and reality might not mix, the creative forces behind (500) Days of Summer do, which may make the whole thing that much more powerful.

Genre - Comedy (3.5)

Screenplay (4)
Acting (4)
Production (3)
Directing (3)