(500) Days of Tedium

Rating: 2/10 (26 September 2010)

I watched this film based on a recommendation- big disappointment.
The basic plot- our loser protagonist (Joseph Gordon Levitt, who did an okay job considering he had to play a dull young man) is crazy about Summer (Zooey Deschanel, who is suitably kooky). The actors are not the downfall- the downfall is the director and the screenplay.
It is so obvious that this film is semi-autobiographical, a sort of whiny revenge. It's a bit like that clingy new kid who really wants you to like him and hang out and be cool together- but his attempts to be cool and kooky are so forced that the film becomes very strained.
Attempts at kookiness include an 'alternative' soundtrack (so we think the film is quirky and alternative, despite it being formulaic and predictable), the play on Summer in the title (it's like a season but also her name, ha ha!) and the tagline ("This is not a love story-this is a story about love." Actually, it is a love story- just a rather dull one with lots of cod philosophy about love- cos he works in a greetings card company! Ha ha, isn't that funny and cute?). The ending is so sickeningly 'cute', you might actually throw up.
The structure of the film is terrible. It's done out like a series of vignettes, which is fine. The technique creates little snapshot moments-perfect for the premise of the film. Conveniently it papers over the cracks the film has as a whole, so you're left with a very bitty film. Sometimes you'll get a good vignette (the one where the couple are playing house in IKEA)but often you will get dull ones. Then there's a countdown of the 500 days, which is done practically a week at a time, but the time gap varies- all it does is drag the pace. Then we have the ill-judged voice-over narrator, an idea which is as awful as it sounds. And the screenplay is incredibly poor- one wonders if it wasn't written by a bad film student, because it is supposedly arty but bears no resemblance to how people actually speak or behave.
If you like Zooey Deschanel, you might like this film. If you have low expectations of films, by all means watch this. For an alternative teen/young person film, watch Pretty in Pink. For a negative film about love, you could watch Closer or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?...there's loads of films out there that live up to their promise. Sadly this film falls short.