More about editing cleverness than real deep feeling, but very fun anyway, and tender.

Rating: 7/10 (23 October 2009)

500 Days of Summer (2009)
OK. First--I liked this movie. I seem to emphasize reasons why it wasn't terrific below, but it's good to remember I liked it. And didn't love it.
Maybe the clever beginning, insisting through a deep-voiced narrator with a twitch of humor, raises expectations a little: this is not a love story. But it looks and feels like one, and of course, it is one, whatever the end might imply. Love varies and is still love.
The movie leans on its format, jumping from moment to moment back and forth through the year and a half of the movie, to give it some of its verve. Surprises are often created by a wry coupling of moments--a happy person as the elevator doors close turns to a sad person when they open, a couple hundred days later. And then back, to day 3 or day 40, or whatever gap might be mined for laughs and irony. This saves the movie, really, but it also becomes the movie, instead of the relationship between the two young leads. The relationship should be everything, and it is everything, of course, but it isn't really much. If you put the pieces back in chronological order, you have something not too amazing, something actually pretty dull, certainly not an hour and half's worth.
The man, Tom, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and the woman, Summer, played by Zooey Deschanel, are almost perfect. They're fun, they are witty, they are restrained as needed, they show tenderness. I liked them a lot, but I didn't love them, and neither did the person I saw the movie with. And if there is a film that needs a couple with magic on the screen, true chemistry, this is it. But then, of course, the ending might make sense in this light. But then, further, if the whole point is a movie about a romance that doesn't quite get off the ground, it keeps the movie grounded, too. I prefer a movie that takes off somehow.
Except for some movie oddities, the events are told simply, and out of order. There is the dancing in the park (completely out of character, but I liked it because it was a breath of air, fresh or not, just air), and some split screen comparisons (sometimes just a way of layering the plot, sometimes to create plot, by creating a fantasy on one side and reality on the other). And these are good, even if they remind you that a lot of the rest is just plain vanilla.
In all, the movie is fun, for sure, a joy even, and without glaring issues. Certain clichés are avoided--the woman is strong and smart, the man gentle and un-macho. They actually make a nice couple. But maybe slightly less interesting than some of your friends, who they don't make movies about for the simple reason they aren't interesting enough.