Wednesday, July 21, 2010

500 Days of Summer (2009)


Introduction:

It's amazing what good buzz can do. When I first read a review for this movie during its festival run, no one had heard of it. Jump forward about six months and I couldn't rent it from my local DVD store - it was always out. Well I finally got a chance to see it. Did it live up to the buzz?

Summary:

Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is breaking up with Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel). Everything seemed perfect and now its all going wrong. Tom's memories take us through 500 days of falling love, being in love and falling out of love with his perfect girl. But as the story progresses we begin to see that Summer may not be perfect after all. What will be revealed about Tom after we see all "500 Days of Summer"?

Good Points:

  • Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel bring their characters to life
  • An entertaining and original script
  • Avoids the clichés of current romantic comedies

Bad Points:

  • A little gimmicky in parts
  • The pacing suffers at times with the fractured narrative
  • The song selections are sure to rub some people the wrong way

Overall:

This is how you make a film about relationships. It’s entertaining, managing to be funny and touching all at the same time. It never goes overboard with the characters or wacky antics. Instead it does its best to show how to people come together, fall for each other and grow apart - even if one of them doesn't realize it. Gordon-Levitt nails the character and Deschanel is perfect in her part, and since they carry the movie it clicks all the way through. Definitely worth checking out, even if this isn't normally your type of movie.

Scores (out of 5)

Visual: 4

Audio: 4

Acting: 5

Script: 4

Music: 4

Direction: 4

Entertainment: 4

Total: 4

Curious about a full review, send me an email and I'll make additional thoughts to this review.

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