Movie Review - (500) Days of Summer

I saw this delightful romantic comedy a few weeks ago and have been slacking on blogging about it.

Here's a link to the trailer.

The film bounces around to different days in the relationship. You'll see Tom and Summer (played to perfection by Joesph Gordon-Leavitt and Zooey Deschanel) share an in-joke together, and then you'll see how the in-joke got started, for example. I'd love to see this film again and take notes, just to reorganize the days in order and see if the relationship becomes even more clear to me.

Tom is a true romantic, who believes he can never be happy until he finds The One girl for him. Summer is the delightful free spirit who becomes Tom's muse. She's independent, funny, charming, and doesn't believe in love. You can already see the disaster in the making, but like a car accident, can't tear your gaze away. Tom loves without reserve, and it's refreshing to see this in a film (as opposed to the woman-who-loves-without-reserve, which is more common).

Tom and Summer meet at work, but it doesn't seem there's a corporate fraternization policy in place at the greeting card company. Tom is bored to tears over his job (he quit following his calling to be an architect) and Summer has just been hired as the boss' new assistant. Tom falls in love immediately.

The song-and-dance number is fantastic and fits the film's quirky style perfectly. For Tom, on that morning, it's only natural that the sun will be shining, bluebirds will be singing, and the rest of Los Angeles will want to take part in his joy.

I think this is a romantic film for those who have already had some disappointments in love. Many of the behaviors remind us of similar crazy (or stupid) things we have all done or can relate to in relationships, and it's nice to see characters who actually grow in this film.

There is one fantastic scene which juxtaposes reality with Tom's expectations, and this was one of the most brilliant pieces of film I've seen all year.

Once the viewer can accept that Summer will definitely not end up with Tom in the film (it's hard to believe even though we're told the film is not a love story, and we're as blind as Tom when it comes to looking at Summer), the story becomes a font of possibilities. At a certain point I wanted to start pushing Tom to forget about her and go do his own thing, which he does, admirably. But only after several days of living in his bathrobe and going down to the convenience store in his slippers to buy bourbon and twinkies.

The film does toss the viewer one romantic bone at the end, and while it caps the film nicely it does seem to be overly predictable and disappointing compared to the 90 minutes that precede it.

Overall, this was a refreshing, funny, and very enjoyable film. It's probably not necessary to catch it in theaters, but there is a scene which highlights some of L.A.'s architecture that is nice to see on the big screen.