500 Days of Bummer

Rating: 6/10 (4 November 2009)

You've got Zooey Deschanel acting like the new Meg Ryan, and a looking-and-sounding-more-like-Ledger-everyday Jason Gordon-Levitt; both are decent thespians, neither have unflattering angles, reviews use the word 'quirky' more times than you can count--this is pure box office gold right here. What could go wrong?
Nothing. Or so I thought. I actually wanted to see this movie. And, despite the annoyingly sporadic bursts of applause from an overenthusiastic moviegoer, I actually didn't find it too bad. But then I watched it again. I missed the first 5 minutes, see. The longer I thought about this movie, the more I found it disturbing.
"Any resemblance to people living or dead is purely accidental...Especially Jenny Beckman...Bitch."
This movie is really about hate, revenge, and why you shouldn't date fun, interesting, and unique women.
For a movie that mentions the word 'love' more times than any movie I've seen before, it has hardly anything to substantial or significant to say about this elusive idea. Oohhhhh, so it takes TWO people to fall in love! Really?! Is that news? One will learn more about a) indie music (the Smiths are indie now, I guess), b) how to make music videos from Marc Webb, and c) how to go on fun dates by frolicking in furniture stores, record shops, and drawing on your date's arm while staring meaningfully into the distant architecture.
Tom Hansen does absolutely nothing to enrich Summer as a person; or help her confront her childhood issues. He is simply the proverbial dick in the glass case. Break glass in case of emergency. Zooey's character Summer on the other hand, inspires Tom to pursue his life's ambition to become an architect. And he even ends up with the drop-dead Minka Kelly (who receives unusually high credits for gorgeously appearing for less than 5 minutes) as a result. So despite his bitching, Tom actually came out of it better than, perhaps, Summer. The audience doesn't even see who Summer ends up marrying...the writers know they can't justify it, besides, they've built Tom up too much already. So they just leave it at some lame encounter in a café where some random schmo comments on an Oscar Wilde book she's reading. Can this movie possibly get any more indie?
If you haven't seen "When Harry Met Sally," I highly recommend watching that instead. At least you'll learn something about relationships.