When Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a young designer with an L.A. greetings card company first sets eyes on his new work colleague, Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel), it’s love at first sight. Summer’s a popular girl and has many a male admirer, but after realising they both have the same taste in music, Tom and Summer begin to slowly get to know one another.
Tom gets just what he wants when he and Summer begin to form a close friendship that soon becomes more intimate. He is madly in love with Summer, and much to his surprise, after getting past first base with her, everything seems set for a long and blossoming relationship. There’s only one problem – Summer doesn’t reciprocate his feelings and instead wants their relationship to remain noncommittal. Tom, on the other hand, would like to think of the two of them as a couple - and a serious couple at that.
500 Days of Summer has received a lot of attention for its unconventional slant on romantic comedy. The hype it received before its UK release was complimentary to say the least. ‘Sleeper hit of the year’, ‘This generation’s Annie Hall’, ‘An endorphin rush of a movie’ were some of the statements bandied around by enthusiastic reviewers.
While it is an original take on the rom-com genre, yes, its style and structure is certainly one thing it has going for it. But does that necessarily constitute a great film? Certainly not.
500 Days of Summer is Littered with Clichés
Despite a clever structure to the narrative, screenwriters Michael Weber and Scott Neustadter still find time to fill the movie with every rom-com cliché going.
If it’s not the bile-inducing exchange of dialogue between the two love birds that borrows heavily from the rom-com manual then it’s scenes such as Tom coaching himself in the bathroom mirror when he nervously gets Summer back to his apartment for the first time. Does anybody really do this?
There’s also the traditional post-sex musical montage of the happy male wandering through the streets of L.A. with a smile on his face, high-fiving passers bye. But then again everybody does this don’t they? And since when do men sit around and offer hand-on-shoulder advice and discuss strategy when it comes to women? They don’t. They mercilessly ridicule each other when trying to chat up women. That’s their job.
Tom’s two geeky, loser friends, Paul and McKenzie, deliver eye-rolling attempts at comedy, none of which provoke even a chuckle from the audience let alone a guttural belly laugh. Then there’s Tom’s younger sister Rachel (Chloe Moretz), a twelve year old girl who has more relationship experience than Tom, Paul and McKenzie put together (which really should worry any older brother) she seems, rather ridiculously, to be Tom’s first port of call when things go wrong with him and Summer. But then again, everyone consults their twelve year old sister on these issues don’t they?
Poor Lead Roles
The whole relationship between the two central characters is what is most galling about this movie. Tom’s schoolboy obsession with Summer might not have been so annoying if she wasn’t one of the most detestable female characters to appear on a cinema screen. There’s nothing much to like about her, she’s aloof and disingenuous to a painstakingly-obvious degree.
Everyone has experienced similar heartache in their own lives and can in some way relate to what Tom is going through but he’s being led down the garden path so obviously by a woman, whom any man with the slightest modicum of common sense could read like an open book. The irritating, lingering stares that Summer casts Tom (ad nauseam throughout any scene in which they become intimate together) blatantly hide the cheeky twinkle of a wind-up merchant. If mentioning that she’s a fan of Ringo Starr and that Octopus’ Garden is her favourite Beatles song didn’t mark Summer out as a ‘wrong un’ then what on earth would?
Tom’s heading towards a crash and burn situation of Hindenburg proportions and it’s staring everyone but Tom in the face. Before long it's easy to lose sympathy with a man that can only be described as gullible. A firm slap and the growth of a pair of balls are the order of the day for Tom.
500 Days of Summer might be trying to force home the point that love is blind but even Stevie Wonder wouldn’t fall for this.
Film References and Style
Without harping on too much about the poor elements of the movie, 500 Days of Summer does have its plus points. As mentioned above the structure of the film is quite satisfying, jumping back and forth throughout the 500 days of Tom’s romance with Summer and charting the periodic ups and downs in their relationship, as well as Tom’s deteriorating mental state. The narrative at times leaps from the movie world to Tom’s imagination and becomes a fantasy/parody of several films of old, including the expressionist French New Wave films of the 1960’s and, in fact, includes quite an emotional split screen alternative to the end of The Graduate. There’s clever use of editing and the artwork in this film is also exemplary, playing on the sub-plot regarding Tom’s inner desire to be an architect rather than a greetings card designer.
However, the final third of the movie, which is genuinely quite moving in places, offers a creativity that comes all too late to save a film that is spoilt beyond repair by a poor set up, too many clichés, bad dialogue and is hampered by some poor acting performances. A different take on the rom-com this might be but compared to more intelligent works of the same genre such as Annie Hall or, more recently Lost In Translation, 500 Days of Summer is a poor relation.
Verdict: 3/5
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