Trying so hard it only occasionally works

Rating: 5/10 (2 August 2009)

Hipster romance/break-up flick starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. At its best, it can be either sweet and insightful or downright heartbreaking. Too bad its best comes around only rarely. Most of the film is made up of wannabe clever moments that make it come off as overly cutesy. Among the aspects the film should have dumped to the wayside: the precocious little sister, the completely useless and unfunny best friends, the constant references to indie music and attempts to win indie cred, the Hall & Oates musical number (an ironic wink to the same people who will swoon over the rest of the soundtrack), the quirky greeting card company and, probably most notably, the final sequence. After excising all that, the film would only run about 45 minutes. About the only bit of cleverness that works is a split scene sequence where, the first time Gordon-Levitt is meeting with Deschanel after their big break-up, his expectations play out in real time against what actually happens. That could have backfired, as so much of the rest of the film does, but Webb directs it so well that the end result is devastating. This happens near the end of the film, and for a while it felt like it was jettisoning cutesiness for real emotion. And then comes the final sequence, which is the worst in recent memory. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has given three of the greatest performances of the current decade in Mysterious Skin, Brick and The Lookout. His character here isn't especially well written, and I think he tries to overcompensate a little. Deschanel, playing the title character, is fairly two dimensional. Webb clearly based the girl on a real ex-girlfriend, and it would have been nice to have this film feel more personal. Instead, it feels like a distant, overwritten indie flick, not too far removed from junk like Juno.