relationships comedy subverts the genre

Rating: 7/10 (22 November 2009)

It would be misleading to call 500 a rom-com. At the very outset we are told, "This is not a love story." And so it proves to be, after a fashion, though it is not giving too much away to say boy gets girl, and girl gets boy.
Tom is wannabee architect who has strayed from the path and needs to find his way back. Summer is a girl who does not believe in romantic love. Both will prove to be the essential catalyst for the other.
So far so generic, but flashing in an ostensibly random fashion between the 500 days of Tom and Summer's relationship, the film achieves an episodic feel, while at the same time chronologically following the seduction, love gained, love lost, closure achieved pattern of so many other relationship movies. The jump-cutting between days also allows for some fun moments, most notably when Tom enters an elevator on top of the world and exits bitter and jaded. Kudos to Joseph Gordon-Levitt for the range of expressions he employs to pull this off. Zooey Deschanel stays mainly deadpan as Summer and it works, as the woman's thoughts and behaviour keep you slightly off-kilter.
I smiled more than a few times. The song-and-dance sequence is ripped from Enchanted, and Bill Forsyth invented the older brother taking relationship advice from his primary-age sister in Gregory's Girl, but in a well-worn, tired genre, 500 manages to be fresh without appearing too contrived.