‘(500) Days of Summer’ is a tale of a doomed love affair that rings true
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Screenwriter Michael H. Weber wrote the film, along with partner Scott Neustadter, and like every other film of the genre, he based it on his real-life experiences. His stand-in, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meets Summer (Zooey Deschanel) and they become friends, date, break up and more — not necessarily in that order — over the course of those 500 days.
The movie jumps all over the place within the narrative, with an ever-present clock to remind us which day it is.
Fans of “How I Met Your Mother” will find much to love here, and not only because of time-shifting narrative, the hero who is a romantically-inclined aspiring architect, and the gender reversal in that it’s the man who wants love and commitment and the woman who resists it. But even if you’ve never heard of HIMYM, the movie has so many entry points, and things to enjoy.
The former child actor Gordon-Levitt has emerged and demonstrated, in such films as “Brick” and the underseen gem “The Lockout,” that he’s a convincing and dynamic leading man, but this it the best he’s ever been. The same goes for Deschanel, who brings just the right amount of verve to someone who’s both a huge mystery and ultimately a fully realized character. It’s a huge breakout for her.
The music is awesome throughout, featuring new songs from Regina Spektor, old ones from The Smiths and Hall and Oates, and a wide variety of obscure but excellent indie rock.
Webb, along with cinematographer Eric Steelberg, finds all sorts of brilliant locations to shoot in downtown L.A., of all places, while the script is both well-structured and full of wit, even as it shifts both through time and from comedy to sadness.
One scene, in which Tom’s “expectations” of a dinner party play out on a split screen next to the “reality,” is as heartbreaking as anything in a movie this year, this side of “Up.”
And probably the most honest thing in the film is the breakup scenes feel like REAL breakups, much more than they resemble the contrived obstacles to love in most romantic comedies.
If “Summer” has a weakness, it’s that it gets a bit too cute at times. One song-and-dance number, while charming, looks like one of those stunts “The Drew Carey Show” used to pull, while the final line of the film is so blindingly obvious that I predicted it about five minutes in advance.
“(500) Days of Summer,” even if it catches on, is unlikely to make one-tenth of the box office as “Transformers: Revenge the Fallen,” even though it has more wit, originality and skill on display in its first five minutes than in the entire running time of Michael Bay’s bloated disaster.
Trust me, you’ll be much more entertained by ‘Summer.’
