A real story about love

Rating: 9/10 (24 April 2011)

Watching a movie like this is just such a big sigh of relief. It's just one glorious breath of fresh air. A beautiful escape from the mundane, the monotone, and the redundant. (500) Days of Summer is a story of boy meets girl, but it is not a love story. It is a story about love. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Tom, a writer for a greeting card company who one day meets the girl of his dreams, Summer, played by Zooey Deschanel. The film chronicles the relationship between Tom and Summer for 500 days which include love, lust, ups, and downs, and plenty of surprises. To label this film as just a romantic comedy would be an injustice to what this film really is, which is a sincere, smart, and human film about life and love.
Films this lively, sharp, smart, and uniquely brilliant just don't come around often enough, making (500) Days of Summer a rare gem. I think it all begins with this films script. The script has all the wit and style that an innocent and lighthearted film like this needs. It is hilarious, as well as heartwarming and deeply moving. Everything about this film is unique and offbeat and the script holds this quirky yet sincere style together wonderfully.
What is so great about this film is that is really narrows its focus and stays on a straight path that follows the two main characters and their relationship. There are plenty of other characters with their own stories, but they are stories only mentioned in passing. The real heart and soul of the movie comes from where it should, the offbeat romance between Tom and Summer. The film avoids spinning off in a whole bunch of tangents that don't further the purpose of the film at all. It stays focused on what the audience wants to see, and what we fall in love with. And it helps that it does focus on two incredibly interesting characters. Tom writes for a greeting card company but wants to be an architect. He has all sorts of style to his persona, but doesn't flaunt it. Summer is a very average girl in looks, but she is so different and Tom sees her as such a rare and perfect girl. We really fall in love with Tom and feel so much sympathy for him during all of the tragic bouts of his relationship with Summer. The film opens with Summer breaking up with him, then the rest jumps around in their relationship. It is all told ingeniously and with the perfect amount of organization to the development of the story that it is able to elicit the maximum amount of sympathy and passion out of the audience.
(500) Days of Summer is funny, smart, lovable, sincere, heartwarming, sad, real, and human. It is one of those movies with such a rare beauty to it that it is something you have to see for yourself if you want to understand it. The magnificence of it all can't be described in words, making watching the movie such a treat. This is a movie that I feel like I could watch over and over again, probably picking up on more and more of its witty little quirks that the movie thrives on. There is nothing to hate about this movie and it is something you can get so much enjoyment from whether this is your type of genre or not. It is just so well made and so addictive. I love this film.