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For everybody who’s sick and tired of the standard rom-coms dumped over us multiple times a year comes a breath of fresh air in the form of (500) Days of Summer which is a movie about a boy and a girl who supposedly fall in love with each other only for the boy to get dumped. Now he will look back on his relationship with her to find out where it went wrong and try to fix it in order to get her back.
(500) Days of Summer takes us back and forth in time depicting multiple days of their time together and separated. The jumping in time isn’t annoying and quite easy to follow, unlike movies like 21 Grams or Memento where the picture makes sense when the credits roll.
This choice and the fact that the script doesn’t follow the standard rom-com requirements set it apart from the rest. I liked how the movie incorporated several gimmicks like a split screen featuring expectation and reality.
Zooey Deschanel has a talent for inhabiting quirky characters who are attractive yet aren’t sex-bombs like Megan Fox. She’s the kind of girl that actually exists rather than hanging on your wall and to which you frequently masturbate to. Did I write that out loud? Here she’s Summer Finn, the titular character, who wants something from Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) but not a serious relationship. He thinks however, that despite her warnings, they do have something serious. Disappointment lies dead ahead.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is also climbing on the ladder of stardom and appears as well as in small indie films like this one as well as big studio films like this year’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Here he’s Tom Hansen, the guy so desperately in love with Summer. It’s his shenanigans that make up a large amount of the movie. He is funny and his problem is easily recognizable as every guy probably has one girl that got away.
(500) Days of Summer is an ideal movie for someone wanting a breath of fresh air. For those who don’t I suggest they go out and watch the latest Meg Ryan/Renee Zellweger movie.
