Review: (500) Days of Summer

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Tom, who aspired to be an architect, but in the meantime took up a job writing greeting card messages, and eventually his aspirations fell by the wayside. Tom falls for his boss’ new secretary Summer (Zooey Deschanel), and eventually they do form a bond. However, Summer makes it clear to Tom that she’s not interested in anything serious. Tom, for his part, has made it abundantly clear that he very much is interested in something serious. Yeah, this isn’t gonna go smoothly. Geoffrey Arend plays Tom’s best friend and co-worker, whilst Chloe Grace Moretz is Tom’s strangely sage younger sister.

 

A lot of people seemed to really like this 2009 (un)romantic comedy from debut feature director Marc Webb (who went on to make “The Amazingly Unnecessary Spider-Man”), but I wasn’t quite feeling it. It’s very well-acted by the two extremely appealing leads, the characters are somewhat likeable (if flawed), but for what it was trying to do here, I don’t think it quite comes off. I think it really falls apart in its final stages.

 

Look, I get it. We were warned right from the beginning that things weren’t going to end in traditional romantic comedy fashion. It just doesn’t work here, though. It’s unsatisfying. I’m not asking for clichés galore, but if there’s a formula for something, perhaps there’s a good reason for it: It works more often than not. ***** SPOILER WARNING ***** Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (the terribly unlikeable “The Spectacular Now”, and the much more enjoyable “Paper Towns”) try to give us something of a happy ending within the confines of the anti-romantic comedy concept they’ve set up, but the problem with focussing on one couple for the entirety of the film is that, perfect match or not, you really want them to work it out and get together by the end. Just because life doesn’t always work like that, doesn’t mean it’s wrong for the movie. I think the reason for my discontent is that the screenwriters didn’t focus quite enough on the incompatibility of the two leads, mainly because the film is told from Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s hopelessly romantic point of view (largely so that it will ultimately come as a kick in the guts, I guess), thus depriving us of how things really were but also giving us the false impression that it is a love story because Tom at the very least is in love. We only get the ‘reality’ in a montage towards the end. That just wasn’t enough for me to not end up somewhat unsatisfied by it. The way it all plays out, I actually started to suspect that the point of the film was Zooey Deschanel slowly being warmed up to the idea of a romantic relationship with Gordon-Levitt, since it does basically play like a romance film. I just assumed she was in denial, otherwise you could argue that she should leave the guy alone once she knows how he feels. It would work so much better if it were more traditional, especially since the leads are substantially more likeable than in the slightly similar “No Strings Attached” (where I absolutely did not want the couple to get together, formula or not). Instead, the film with the irritatingly cute title leads to heartbreak before settling on an irritatingly cute ending that frankly sounds like it would lead to a better film than this one, even if Zooey Deschanel is profoundly more interesting an actress than Minka Kelly. I don’t know if it’s lame to criticise a film for not ending the way I wanted it to even though it tells us right from the beginning that it’s not a ‘love story’, but even so, the finale just didn’t feel right to me, realistic or not. Or to put it another way, it’s not especially appealing to me to watch things play out like this. ***** END REALLY LONG SPOILER *****

 

Although the rest of the film is not bad, it does have a similar problem of the filmmakers getting in the way of the story to no betterment whatsoever. The narrative structure is irritatingly non-linear. I get it, our remembrance of relationships isn’t linear, but a series of moments out of context. Cool. That makes for an annoying and unnecessary filmic device, though. It also features the most half-arsed and uselessly intermittent neutral narrator I’ve come across. Why did they even bother with that when at other times it has Joseph Gordon-Levitt address the camera himself? An hour in we get a random B&W “When Harry Met Sally…” interview segment about love. For fuck’s sake, just tell the damn story, right? Despite my issues with its conclusion, the story and characters themselves are enough that the film doesn’t need all this quirk and weirdness. It certainly doesn’t need the irritating folky, girly songs on the soundtrack that sound like one of those breathy-mouthed pixie-ish singers in the midst of having a stroke or perhaps they’re at the dentist and the novocaine has started to work. It also doesn’t need the all-too cute casting of Chloe Grace Moretz as Gordon-Levitt’s precociously wise younger sister acting like Rob Reiner’s character in “When Harry Met Sally…” (This film can’t even lick that classic’s boots as far as I’m concerned). ‘You Make My Dreams Come True’ is one of only two Hall & Oates songs I like (‘Maneater’ being the other), but for a film with already too much quirk for my liking, I really didn’t see the need for a song and dance routine with animated birds. These are sweet, likeable people and the filmmakers were preventing me from getting to know them better. I’m still giving the film a decent rating, purely because both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel are innately likeable actors. I could’ve done without Gordon-Levitt’s cynical rant about his job (it’s a bit of a cliché), but for the most part he’s easy to take as a lead. He may not be perfect, but you want to see him happy. Deschanel (whose character’s high school nickname is hilarious, if spoiled by the trailers) is already a TV star on “New Girl” (she is that show. The rest of is pretty much a bust), and you can see here how someone probably figured out that she deserved her own show. However, she should be a giant movie star as far as I’m concerned. In addition to acting talent, she has ‘it’. She has all of ‘it’. She’s truly incandescent on screen and fascinating to watch. In fact, she’s got enough quirk that the film doesn’t need all of the other nonsense. The two stars make a great couple, even if their characters perhaps don’t.

 

Two likeable stars in an anti-romantic comedy that manages to get in the way of the story and its characters to great irritation and eventual disappointment. The conclusion doesn’t work, either. However, I’ll bet it’s someone’s favourite film, it’s bound to be. An interesting failure, I wish I liked it.

 

Rating: C+