Director: Marc Webb
Screenplay: Scott Neustadter, Michael Weber
Producers: Mason Novick, Jessica Tuchinsky, Mark Waters, Steven J. Wolfe
Starring: Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Clark Gregg, Minka Kelly, Rachel Boston, Matthew Gray Gubler, Chloe Moretz
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running time: 95 min.
(3.5/5)The trailer for Marc Webb’s feature film debut (500) Days of Summer clearly states: “This is not a love story.” Is the disclaimer really necessary? Can’t we simply have a story about two people in a relationship and not immediately assume it’s a love story? It’s not necessary but the line hints at what we can expect from the film and the type of comedy Webb and writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber have in store and in that respect, it fits perfectly because the film is not a love story in the way which we’ve come to expect. It is, however, a relationship story and the two, love and relationships, don’t always go hand in hand.
Tom is a boy, a closet architect who spends his days writing bad greeting cards, hanging out with friends and recovering from relationships. Summer is the new girl at the office. She’s cute, she’s funny and she loves The Smiths. The two date. Things end badly. Post script. The end. The basics may be run of the mill but the details aren’t. You see, unlike the typical relationship story Hollywood tends to dish out, it’s not the girl who falls madly in love only to be left behind but rather the boy who goes through the suffering. He loved too quickly, she wasn’t interested in a long term relationship and for that, she’s apparently: 1) a dude and 2) a bitch. But what does one do when the story doesn’t fully work but the execution asks, no forces, you to enjoy yourself?
Walking away, it’s hard not to be enamoured by the film because Webb creates a beautiful, highly endearing and entertaining universe for his equally endearing and quirky characters to inhabit. Musical numbers, huge chalk boards, apartments the size of small houses, bad 80s pop songs, bad 80s pop songs karaoke; I couldn’t help but tap my foot and smile but when the relationship heads south, I couldn’t follow. Not completely at least. I couldn’t feel sorry for Tom for the same reason I have a hard time feeling sorry for all the female characters that have followed the same path: it was never meant to be, I know what you’re thinking: where would we be if we never followed our heart? If we let things go when they don’t easily work? Whatever happened to persistence? Fine. Sure. Fair argument but when is enough moping enough? When do you move on to the next relationship? For Tom the answer seems to be the same as it is for everyone else: in time.
Essentially what we have a romantic comedy in reverse. Tom is the clingy, too quick to fall in love character we’ve come to expect from “the girl” while Summer is the breezy non-romantic we’ve come to expect as “the guy”. The role reversal doesn’t endear the film to my heart but I can’t help but think that it has fooled many. That’s not to say (500) Days of Summer doesn’t have merits. On the contrary it has much going for it, not least of which is the fact that this relationship feels authentic. As much as the universe they inhabit and the character themselves feel put on and exaggerated, Tom and Summer’s relationship, how it grows, hot it falls apart and how it is eventually resolved, feels thoroughly authentic.
Don’t be fooled by the statement that this is not a love story. (500) Days of Summer is not a romance in the sense that we have come to expect, all fairy tales and happy endings, but it provides a realistic relationship which happens to involve romance; if one sided.
It’s not perfect but (500) Days of Summer is a charming, tightly constructed, highly entertaining relationship dramedy well worth a look if only to observe Webb, Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel’s effective pendulum swing from drama to comedy and back.
Click “play” to see the trailer:
Links:
IMDb profile
Official Site
Flixster Profile for (500) Days of Summer
just that he is a closet architect and works for a greeting card company has to get you feeling a bit queasy…
and how much do they milk both of those, this higher aspiration vs. the mercantile cheap laughs one? They don’t hit you over the head with this dichotomy they bash your skull in. There is a lot of padding in this film.
Summer is not a catch in this film, and I say that speaking as a healthy hormonal male, somehow the sparkle is not there, she is devoid of any characteristic remotely attractive. This makes the whole ‘falling in love’ aspect of the film ring false to me. When and where do you see or feel this love happening? When they are trying to remember where a pop cultural tune comes from? When they sing karaoke (done far far far better in Lost in Translation)? When exactly, I don’t remember even a single attempt to make her desirable? The narrator makes a point that she IS desirable, but we don’t see it in her character. This is not like Jules and Jim, where you feel the radiance of the woman upsetting the character’s lives… everything here is just nominally expressed. In name only is there love, is there affection, is there chemistry… because a screenwriter wanted there to be such. But it isn’t there, or not in anything I saw.
and Tom, oh God, Tom, all I could think is, is there any wonder she isn’t interested in him, he is so bland. I had an architect wannabe roommate and Tom reminded me exactly of him… he felt like someone who had all the accoutrements of a desirable human being, but without the spark, without the life there… and Tom is that now dramatized. What with him, is supposed to make him desirable, the only thing I can think of is that Summer is so insensitive at times you feel sorry for Tom, but that is something due to predicament, not character… you pity him not care for him in that case. And Levitt has charisma oozing out of him, and it seems insane that even with that naturally, he has nothing to work with to make him interesting.
The more I think about this film, the more I dislike it.
had to vent.
There’s not going to be any way to talk about this film in-depth, I don’t think, without spoilers, because the way it ends is so integral to the film. So consider that my spoiler warning.
One thing that I really liked about it is that even though it’s about a relationship that does’t work out, it’s not a tragic relationship-not-working-out story. It’s an average relationship-not-working-out. Sure it FEELS tragic to Tom, but it would, wouldn’t it? He wants it to last forever, she’s not sure and moves on – I loved that she turned out to be right instead of the normal romantic comedy tradition that the couple we’ve been watching ends up, of course, together at the end. It’s not about the disintigration of a relationship so much as it is about a stepping-stone relationship. We rarely see those in movies – we see the final relationship, not the ones before it.
I agree the role reversal seems more innovative than it actually is, but I think it worked for the film; certainly the “normal” clingy girl version wouldn’t have worked as well.
The other thing I liked is that I keep hearing people talk about Judd Apatow-related films as being romcoms from a male point of view – granted, but his version of the rowdy, immature man-child isn’t a male point of view that I care about seeing or trying to empathize with. (500) Days, though, is a male-point-of-view romance (and I’d argue any artificial-ness is because we’re seeing it through Tom’s eyes, and he’s neither a reliable witness nor a particularly nuanced storyteller when it comes to characterization) with a male leading character that I don’t feel contemptuous towards.
—rest of comment written after refreshing page and reading rot’s comment—
Maybe it’s just because I have existing crushes on both JGL and Zooey, but I didn’t have any problem believing they’d spark. As I was watching, I thought, hey he’s funny, he’s shy, he’s in an industry he doesn’t care about and didn’t train for just like me, he likes the same music as I do, and if I worked in his office and met him, yeah I’d date him. If I could get him to notice me.
I’m with you Jandy – I never had trouble believing that there was a spark. And I agree with everything else you mention but I couldn’t fully follow through because there seemed to be (to me at least) a mean streak toward Summer. Sure, some of it is tongue in cheek – like the bit before the credits, but some of it – like the rooftop dinner scene, really bothered me. It made her come across a bit heartless and in the closing moment, they try to take it back with that poignant bench scene. It seemed to me like the writers were unsure of who Summer was/is. Is she nice and just misunderstood by Tom or a heartless bitch who plays with men’s hearts? I couldn’t really get past that.
More explicit spoilers in this comment.
You’re not the first person I’ve seen characterizing Summer as a bitch, but I didn’t really see it that way (again, girlcrush on Zooey might be getting in the way, which is the other reason I was hesitant to review the film myself). I agree, she definitely should’ve told Tom about her engagement – but I think she just wasn’t sure how. She’d gone on and on telling him for months that she didn’t believe in love, or marriage, or lasting relationships, and now she’s getting married? I think she had to get to a certain point herself before she could face talking to him about it, and that’s the bench scene.
I think it is helpful to remember that the whole thing is from Tom’s point of view. We never see Summer except when Tom’s there (except the brief montage of her wedding), we never see her discussing the relationship with anyone else as Tom does with his guy friends. That’s why we get this alternating idealized and disillusioned view of Summer, because she’s always filtered through his consciousness and how he feels about her at any given moment. (It also means she’s basically objectified in the film, which would be an interesting thing to explore in a feminist essay, but I’m not the writer to do it.)
I think she honestly liked being with Tom and enjoyed their time together, but while he fell head over heels for her, she didn’t for him. She gave it a shot, but she was never sure, and stayed distanced on purpose – it meant she wasn’t always nice and didn’t always do the right thing by him (the bar scene, the rooftop party), but it hardly makes her a bitch. It makes her someone who isn’t quite sure what she wants, but acts as though she does. I can identify with that.
I think I’m using the term a bit too loosely and I don’t think she *is* a bitch but that the film wrongly antagonized her. Clearly she’s simply not as taken with Tom as he is with her but the film seems to go out of its way to make her out to be a bad person (the bit where they flashback to all the moments when she turned away from Tom & the relationship) and then it goes out of its way to make her out to be good. Sadly, they lost me when they make her out to be bad when I didn’t feel like she was a bad person – just someone in a relationship that didn’t work out.
It seemed to me like the writers were unclear of who Summer was. Was she a bitch or just a woman trying to sort our her own life. She just seems to be an object rather than a real person. I mean, what do we really learn about her? That she’s a bit different? That she likes The Smiths? I can’t really think of much else. She’s very one dimensional and I guess the reason it bothers me more here than in other movies is because this feels so much smarter than other romcoms (I realize I’m generalizing and shoving into a category that it doesn’t completely fit) and since the movie gave me so much more than I’m used to, it made it that much harder to overlook the fact that Summer seems so flat. I guess it’s some kind of post-viewing expectation deflation? I don’t know.
even if Summer is filtered through Tom, oscillating between dreamy and a bitch, where is the character that we the audience get to experience and say yes, this IS someone to fall in love with?
Take everything Zooey away, and you just have the story, give me examples of where this character is desirable? If its just that she is pretty, and he is pretty, thats pretty vacuous. If she is objectified and what matters most is Tom and his relation to this other, than what is desirable about him, as a character, as one involved in this relationship… I swear this film is playing lip service to love, there is nothing in this movie that feels like someone experienced in love, it feels like someone who heard about it in a pop song. If its not love, just an infatuation, than lets admit is a very superficial infatuation being depicted, hormonal quasi-Meatballs American Pie level. Then don’t have your narrator claim this is a story about love, and have a bench scene to suggest something mature and thoughtful has been depicted… what has been depicted is hormonally askewed.
Had to leave halfway through ’cause my friend got sick, but I wasn’t too upset with leaving. I wouldn’t have walked out of the movie otherwise, but I felt like this was mostly pretentious drivel with a few laughs. The best thing about it was the Harrison Ford cameo.
wtf. Harrison Ford is in this?!?!?!?! Lies.
believe me, the second half is actually worse.
Hah, no way Jonathan ignores this movie now.
Harrison Ford is no laughing matter. I doubt he shows up on the IMDb, but trust me, he’s in there.
The Harrison Ford bit is pretty funny, and there are a lot of isolated funny bits in the film.
Sean at Film Junk gave it 3/4 so somehow this quirk is okay, but Away We Go quirk is not…
I call for a moratorium on quirk, both in movies and the use of the word.
This was your typical Hollywood love story told while reversing the roles of the character. That is why it seems so different. And you can’t blame Summer at all. She told him @ the Ikea on the bed (funny scene btw) that this was not that serious. He couldn’t help but fall in love (that was pretty real IMO) and in the end he got hurt. Whether or not we want to admit it, some dudes have gotten the short end of the stick in relationships and he was one of them. He just crashed and burned real hard and then got his hopes up for a potential make up.
I did think the scene that had “expectations” and “reality” split scene was one of the best scenes in the movie. That was very, very well done.
It was a good movie but I wanted more. I compare this movie to “Chasing Amy” b/c it is a different type of love story. CA didn’t leave me wanting more but 500 Days did.
Nice review BTW.
The movie’s “quirky” elements are not nearly as bad as people make them out to be. For the most part, the band and film references make sense in terms of the characters. The only reference that felt out of place and forced was the Sid and Nancy joke that is already in the trailers. There’s a huge difference between this movie and “Juno” in terms of how they handle “quirk.” In “Juno,” the quirk feels forced into the script to make the audience realize how (annoyingly) clever of a writer Diablo Cody is. The writing then comes off as unnatural. I never had this problem with “500 Days…” For the most part, the quirk felt in control and natural to the characters.
I agree with you, John. Because of the basic tone of the film and its cast and the way it’s been marketed, it’s really easy to throw it into the genre of “quirky, sorta-not-really-indie comedies,” but I’m not sure it really fits there. And I like quirk (yeah, I still like Juno). There’s much less quirk in (500) Days though, than in Juno or Little Miss Sunshine or Napoleon Dynamite or even, in a slightly different way, Wes Anderson films. I just watched The Life Aquatic and that is some quirk right there – why do they all wear red caps? No reason – it’s quirky. That’s all. I never got the quirk for quirk’s sake vibe from (500) Days.
And now I’ve said “quirk” far more times than it should ever be said in one comment.
Strange and amusing BANK ROBBER MUSICAL Video with Zooey Deschanel and J-Gordon Levitt: http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2009-08-04-zooey-joe-music-video_n.htm
@Jandy: ” I just watched The Life Aquatic and that is some quirk right there – why do they all wear red caps?”
Well, not entirely, it’s an obvious allusion/reference/homage to Jacques Cousteau, the very basic template from which Steve Zissou and his Oceanographic society.
There are dozens of Costeau bits. Cousteau’s boat was called THE CALYPSO, and in an indirect musical connection, Zissou’s boat is the Belafonte (the calypso singer). One of Cousteau’s sons died in a vehicle accident while being a part of the crew. Ditto here. I’m sure there are more. Cousteau is explicitly thanked in the closing credits of The Life Aquatic.
Kurt, that makes so much more sense. Thanks! I wish I’d known that while watching it. Maybe I’ll read up on Cousteau and watch it again – I might like it more.
This is not directed at Jandy or anyone else specifically, but a trend I’ve noticed with Anderson’s last two live action films in critical (and movie goer) circles.
THE LIFE AQUATIC was completely and unfairly written off because people got their fill of Andersons style with the very (deservedly) lauded THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, and failed to take a closer look at what he was doing with THE LIFE AQUATIC (essentially remaking 8 1/2). It is a great film.
In many ways I wish folks would stop penalizing certain auteurs for doing what they do. Sometimes for a filmmaker to keep kicking the can from different angles is a blessing not a curse. And this will perhaps go for Mr. FOX as well.
Malick can keep kicking the Americana can as long as he wants.
Yeah, I didn’t think Life Aquatic was nearly as good as Tenenbaums (but, not many films are), and I liked Rushmore and maybe Darjeeling Limited more, but I was really surprised at how many people reacted with “Life Aquatic sucks” when I posted about it on FriendFeed. And if I’d known more about the Cousteau references even the parts (like the red hats) that felt over-the-top wouldn’t have bothered me.
I also don’t like 8 1/2 as much as La Dolce Vita or La Strada or Nights of Cabiria, though, so maybe I’m just not as into that story.
I just saw this and was going to do an EXTENDED THOUGHTS, but Marina has captured pretty much my thoughts above. I think the characters and the ‘world’ are a bit exaggerated and blunt, but many the details of the relationship ring true in a way. I appreciated the guy/girl role reversal, and I loved the “Expectation”/”Reality” split screen shot, that was bloody brilliant.
I like that the style was heightened to fit JGL’s moods, but in terms of the GreetingCard/Architecht symbols, yea, a bit too much.
I disagree with Rot above on not liking Zooey, I think it is a great performance because she is never really committed to the relationship anyway, hence the aloofness. JGL is as much in love with the idea of Summer (stealing Marinas words) as with the actual girl, and the honest reconsideration of all the ‘she was not really into me’ moments at one point of the movie is apt.
I guess the movie does have a refusal to go anywhere really dark, JGLs suffering is played fairly light. But I must admit, I enjoyed the heck out of the film while watching it. Loved the two central performances, and I even didn’t gag on the ‘stinger’ line of the girls name at the end of the film. A pleasant time at the movies, and escapist rom-com worth a look where the characters aren’t braindead or cartoons. High-Fidelity-Lite, and that is cool with me.
It is not ‘drowning in quirk’ which many had led me to believe. It may be a bit ‘adorable’ even ‘cute’ at times, but it has 10x the brains of the usual Rom-Com or this type of movie. So points for that. I’d certainly recommend it to folks.
“I disagree with Rot above on not liking Zooey, I think it is a great performance because she is never really committed to the relationship anyway, hence the aloofness”
I never said I didn’t like her performance what I said was:
“even if Summer is filtered through Tom, oscillating between dreamy and a bitch, where is the character that we the audience get to experience and say yes, this IS someone to fall in love with?
Take everything Zooey away, and you just have the story, give me examples of where this character is desirable? If its just that she is pretty, and he is pretty, thats pretty vacuous. If she is objectified and what matters most is Tom and his relation to this other, than what is desirable about him, as a character, as one involved in this relationship…”
for a rom-com to work I have to care about the characters, there has to be ROM not just COM. The characters in this film are as hackneyed as the Hallmark cards they sneer at.
“If she is objectified and what matters most is Tom and his relation to this other, than what is desirable about him, as a character, as one involved in this relationship…”
I think that what makes Tom an endearing and likable character is his idealistic view of romance and relationships. And seeing this view crushed is something that almost anyone can relate to.
than was Ally McBeal endearing and likable because she was dumped by her boyfriend and has an idealistic view of romance and relationships? To me the level of reality in 500 Days is on par with that tv show.
some shows just play lip service to ideas and I just don’t think because a film situates a character in an obvious way, i.e. this guy is depressed because he drinks and stays in bed, that that immediately translates to empathy and character depth. he remains a stick figure, a caricature… and caricatures when dealing with romance don’t work for me.
I think we are treading into High Fidelity territory here, in that Tom think Summer ‘clicks’ with him, as she shares similar interests, a willingness not to ‘just go with the flow’ and with here lack-of-opening up, a mysteriousness that has to appeal to any romantic. I think it is a lot of little things that add up beyond simply “She is pretty” (which she most definitely is.)
Just because the film doesn’t really want to go to any ‘dark places’ (and filters Tom’s suffering though perhaps some form of softened nostalgia….I’m thinking that the film may have worked better if they dropped the “LITTLE CHILDREN” style narrator, and had Tom post-summer narrating in some way would have cleaned this up. Minor gripe though.
The film hit my pleasure button, and I totally bought why Tom would be enamoured with summer. When a film is weaving its spell on me, I’m far more forgiving of its flaws (which are certainly present here). In the end, yea, I quite liked the movie and will certainly revisit at some point.
“Summer is not a catch in this film, and I say that speaking as a healthy hormonal male, somehow the sparkle is not there, she is devoid of any characteristic remotely attractive. This makes the whole ‘falling in love’ aspect of the film ring false to me.”
Whoa, speak for yourself, buddy. I think they laid out very well her attractive qualities. Perhaps you don’t like the independent, free-spirited, open-mindedness, quick-witted, and sometimes silly Summer Finn who seems to lack any sort of sentiment, but as far as I’m concerned, her character had many appealing characteristics and I found her very desirable, and not just because she is adorable. Do you prefer the blonde bimbo types?
This movie worked on every level for me. It had style, it had great performances by the two leads with plenty of chemistry, the story unfolded in a very interesting fashion, and it was quite the accurate examination of the perception that many people have on love. Gordon-Levitt’s Tom Hansen dealt with the breakup in a mirror image of the way I dealt with the breakup by my three-year college sweetheart. Many of his utterances came from my mouth verbatim (“I don’t want to move on, I want to get her back,” the desperation turned resentment, all that talk about fate, etc.) and much of what Summer said rung true as well (“You’re still my best friend,” “I just don’t want to be in a relationship,” etc.). And like Tom, it ended with my very exact realization that life is not guided by unknown forces, but just a series of coincidences. Maybe a part of the reason I enjoyed this so much was because it reflected a period of my life (and Zooey’s character is very reminiscent of my ex-girlfriend). While it may have had its share of exaggerations for the sake of the cinematic experience, it was a very accurate portrayal of first “true” love gone wrong and it was executed perfectly.
My man crush on JGL continues (and my assessment that Zooey is the most adorable person alive is further strengthened).
Oh, and the Expectation/Reality part – awesome.
And The Seventh Seal reference. Great stuff.
How awesome: