A different opinion

Rating: 4/10 (29 August 2009)

I was really hoping and expecting to like this film. I was surprised to walk out of the theater annoyed at what seemed like an adolescent take on romantic love. Maybe part of the problem is that I recently watched Annie Hall. Like many other filmic treatments of love, 500 days seems derived from Annie Hall. There are Bergman references, cartoon characters, split screens, direct address of the audience which all smell and feel like the classic. Even the Deschanel character seems like a flat, more one dimensional,cynical version of Annie (she doesn't hold a candle to Diane Keaton, no where near the charm and far more disturbed) delivering conversation ending platitudes like "what always happens...life." (oooh, that's deep). Sis far more a caricature than anything else. I would lay bets her marriage ends in divorce and that she is much more pathological than the film lets you in on. The Joseph-Gordon Levitt character also seems unsophisticated and puerile. Although he is charming in his role, he is never in anything approaching love with this woman; he remains mired in his projections and idealizations of her and we are forced to watch this painful display of 14 year old obsession. I think by the end he gets it, but by then you have had to suffer right along with him. He is also not spared the stultifying writing {the quitting his job speech where he decides he's not going to be part of the "bulls**t" any longer) that makes this move sound like a grown ups Say Anything.
I guess that was my main problem with the movie. It just doesn't really seem to have anything intelligent or important to say about love. These people didn't seem credible to me, they lacked depth and maturity. In the 32 years that have elapsed since Annie Hall it seems that our culture has gotten more childish and superficial and less, not more, understanding of love. Maybe that is what is most disappointing to me; that this is what we have to say about the subject. If that is the case no wonder people are so emotionally stunted when it comes to relationships.
And lastly, I just couldn't buy the whole LA thing. Why try so hard to make LA look like New York? Who takes the train, the subway and the bus? I mean, isn't LA good enough as it is without tying to make it look urban in the traditional sense?