It's a beautiful and immensely satisfying film

Rating: 9/10 (22 July 2009)

In (500) Days of Summer, music video director Marc Webb transitions into the feature world by telling the story of Tom, a man who firmly believes that true love and happiness are mutually inclusive, and Summer, the woman Tom falls hopelessly in love with but who does not believe in the idea of love herself. The two set out on a tentative relationship, undefined on her insistence, and the story follows the 500 days from when they first meet each other.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Tom with a fantastic blend of awkward shyness and modest charm. His earnest pursuit of Summer, played effervescently by Zooey Deschanel, unfolds with equal amounts of hilarious courtship missteps and gracious charm. For this story to work, the audience has to fully believe in Tom and his budding relationship with Summer, and Gordon-Levitt makes that all possible. His performance here is stellar, crafting a character that the audience not only wants to root for, but in which they can see a bit of themselves as well. He idealizes without being impractical, and broods but not to annoyance. Hopeless romantics typically can come off as desperate or extreme, but Gordon-Levitt plays him with more than enough charisma to win us over.
Deschanel is excellent too. She's played a lot of the same roles over the past couple of years, that of the too-commonly seen manic pixie dream girl, and frankly it's an element that is definitely present here as well. However, there's also a grounded-ness to the character, an honesty to how she was written and the way Deschanel plays her that makes Summer so much more successful than the Happy of Gigantic. Sure, she's alluring and enigmatic, but she's also selfish and temperamental, even occasionally cruel. On the spectrum of MPDG's, she's more akin to Kate Winslet's Clementine from Eternal Sunshine than Natalie Portman's Sam from Garden State; in other words, she works here both as that tantalizing creature who "exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures," as Nathan Rabin coined it, and also as a rounded woman who we recognize and can relate to from our own lives.
That edge of "realness" to the characters is something that is most refreshing about (5oo) Days of Summer. Full disclosure: this movie is full of whimsical and fantastical moments, and has more than a fair share of cheeky, 4th-wall-breaking winks at the audience. However, not only is all of that executed with a finesse and restraint that would put Ferris Bueller to shame, there's a surprising candor to the story. Despite an at-times wacky cast (Chloe Moretz, however, deserves special mention in playing Tom's precocious kid-sister Rachel with a level- headedness that always eluded Dakota Fanning), the lead characters feel whole and fleshed-out. The relationship between Tom and Summer is treated respectfully and sugar-free, taking on its often messy turns with a sincerity and eloquence that doesn't ever feel forced or overly contrived.
That relationship is also what obviously drives the movie, and it is carried by the chemistry between the two leads. Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel play off each other so well here. There's one particular scene in the copy room at the company where Tom and Summer work that just comes together completely naturally and hilariously. The audience goes through the stages of their relationship and buys in to their ups and downs because it never feels like two Hollywood actors reading lines off a page, but rather two people actually sharing an experience.
Marc Webb does an amazing job here, weaving together so many elements that could easily be jarring or alienating and instead turns it all into a brilliant mosaic of love in life. He's knocked his feature directorial debut out of the park, and even the few flaws are easily overlooked for the deft touch he brings to a playful and touching tale. His background in music is clearly evident here, as he's populated the film with a soundtrack that is an eclectic mix of classic tunes and catchy indie melodies sure to get the hipster crowd all atwitter. It's probably only the second film this year after Star Trek that was so enjoyable I wanted to watch it again right away. But while Star Trek was an amazing and pulse-pounding thrill ride, (500) Days is more the insightful and memorable road trip, packed full of laughs and good-feeling.
(500) Days of Summer tells us from the start: "This is not a love story." In that statement, the wry and observant narrator is not entirely correct. (500) Days of Summer is a lot of things - it's both funny and moving, as refreshing as it is honest, and thoughtful in one wave and provocative in another. It's a unique mix of whimsy and real, a genuine portrait of a relationship embellished with the colors and soundtrack that only emotions can evoke in our lives. It's a beautiful and immensely satisfying film, and so I endeavor to amend the above misguided statement to just an understatement: "This is not just a love story."

Roy from http://www.cinemaverytasty.com