500 Days of Summer

500 Days of Summer
2009
Directed by Marc Webb

I certainly wanted to like this movie. I was sold on the solid leading duo of rising star Joseph Gordon-Levitt and hipster wet dream Zooey Deschanel. I also found the idea of an anti-rom-com marketed towards the indie crowd to be appealing. But I had my doubts, and these are frequently the harbinger of disappointment.

"This is not a love story," goes the warning at the very start of the film, following shortly thereafter with the breaking up of Tom and Summer (JGL and Deschanel) over pancakes. The story picks up again at the beginning of Tom's infatuation with Summer, when she arrives as a new employee at the greeting card company he works at. From this point on, the movie jumps to various moments throughout their relationship (500 days, get it?) and you could be forgiven for forgetting the whole "not a love story" thing... for a while.

The thing is, Tom is a sappy guy with delusions of true love and destiny; but Summer is aloof and non-committal. She tells him up front that she's not looking for anything serious - and proceeds to sleep with him. Mixed signals much? But Tom allows himself to believe that Summer is "the one" and starts pressuring her to define their relationship. See, all his life he's been fed notions of love through movies, music, and literature; hell, his job as a greeting card writer requires him to perpetuate this pleasant but nebulous sentiment. (In perhaps the best moment in the movie, Tom gives us a bitter, but illuminating, rant on the perpetuation of bullshit as regards the neat packaging of love and sentimentality in society.)

So far, so good. I thought Gordon-Levitt was quite good, and I thought it was a nice change to see a male character with notions of true love. Deschanel, on the other hand... Well, I always liked her, but I'm definitely thinking she's a one-trick pony. Cute and quirky are nice, but it seems to be all this girl does; she's always the same. I tend to wonder if she's just being herself rather than acting. But my main problem was with how her character was written. Summer is just not a believable person. It seems like they took a poll of indie guys and scenesters to find out what their dream girl would be like, and then they just combined the results into some sort of mythical creature. Not that Summer is perfect; on the contrary, she's quite neurotic and emotionally distant. But on the whole, the character never really comes to life because she seems artificial.


Another problem is that 500 Days of Summer really milks the indie cred. I think that the inclusion of Deschanel would have been enough, but the writers and director definitely seemed to be hell-bent on making every hipster reference possible. At one point Tom sings along with a karaoke version of "Here Comes Your Man" by the Pixies. (Does it strike anybody as odd that they would have this song, but not Springsteen's "Born to Run"?) Tom and Summer goof around in an Ikea. Tom sports a Joy Division tee. Both share an enduring love of the Smiths. On the one hand, it's sort of nice for once to see a movie with which I share the same cultural reference points. On the other hand, it does come across as phony and pandering. And I have to wonder, if this movie was specifically marketed to somebody like me, and I wasn't sold on it... what would the average person think? Would it seem charmingly obtuse? Exciting and mysterious? I have no idea.

It's too bad about the level of artifice on display, because the movie is well-directed otherwise. A number of different styles keep the film feeling loose and fun. There are some funny fantasy sequences like a song-and-dance number, a black-and-white Bergman tribute, and some hilariously contrasting montages. The supporting cast is apt but unintrusive. My girlfriend thought I was insane when I got all excited about Matthew Gray Gubler making an appearance as Tom's buddy Paul; I'm used to seeing him as nerdy Dr. Spencer Reid from "Criminal Minds." He definitely looks weird in a polo shirt. Stick to the suit and tie, Gubler! Tom's advice-dispensing, 10-year-old sister was a totally ridiculous and unnecessary addition to the story.


In the end, I didn't think 500 Days of Summer was all that bad. I certainly think I liked it better than Dom, who was quite unimpressed (but who now thinks more highly of Gordon-Levitt at least.) I agree with her criticism that Tom should have seen the break-up coming because Summer was clear on not wanting a serious relationship right from the start, and that it shouldn't have taken three quarters of the movie for him to realize it. However, I think the point was that he was able to delude himself into thinking that Summer was the one in spite of all evidence to the contrary. He allowed his ideals and misconceptions to overtake his real life and wound up disappointed. You have to come around to the idea that, in spite of his charm and earnestness, Tom was being a dick, not Summer. Blinded by his obsession, he failed to realize that while Summer seemed to be the right one for him, he was not the right one for her.

6.6