Review of (500) Days of Summer (2009) by Craig W — 07 Jul 2013

I don't like romantic-comedy stories generally, but you should be told up front, this is not a love story. (500) Days of Summer is an emotional, smart and visually rich film, which I should have seen years ago!

500 Days of Summer, is a movie directed by Marc Webb, who is a fairly new big director, who has directed movies such as The Amazing Spider-Man and My Chemical Romance and, nope, that's it. Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber wrote the movie, and both, same as Webb, are fairly new onto the Hollywood movie writing scene, each writing only a handful of movies. This is quite surprising, in my opinion, because 500 Days of Summer has a sense of class and maturity that I feel lacks in most movies these days. Every single scene seems to have been planned out perfectly, to incorporate those small humorous moments, and those weeping emotional moments, and all of these work in perfect harmony.

500 Days of Summer is about a guy named Tom, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who works in a greeting card company, who believes that he will never be happy until he meets the "one," while Zooey Deschanel plays a girl, Summer, who has never believed that love really exists. Tom and Summer meet when Summer is assigned to be the assistant to his boss. Tom immediately has a deep interest in Summer, and after multiple meetings, they begin to develop a relationship. Not necessarily a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, but a relationship nonetheless. As the plot jumps around, we go through the 500 days of Tom's relationship with Summer, experiencing brilliant highs, and the lowest of lows, as we see Tom grow into a bigger and emotional stronger person.

The acting in this movie, one word, woah! This movie sets the standard for casting and acting in a romantic comedy, because the cast is phenomenal! JGL as Tom is great, he gives a sense of realism and relatability to his character that I generally don't see in most romantic comedies. Whether this be that I connect with a guy as the main protagonist better than a girl, possibly, but the fact is that JGL brings his A-Game to this movie, and you feel like you're his best friend the whole way through. Zooey Deschanel also is great in this movie, and really pulls off the almost selfish approach that Summer has. She is probably the best cast character in this movie, as Zooey is very vibrant, and gives a good sense of life to the character, which needed to be for this kind of movie. Their chemistry alone is enough to carry this movie, as they made me think they were a real couple the whole way through. Their back and forth is really well done, and again, it boils down to that they give a sense of realism to each of their characters. The supporting cast is good, Geoffrey Arend as McKenzie, Tom's best friend, Clark Gregg as Vance, his boss (I unconsciously shouted "Coulson!" as he appeared on screen. Thanks JeremyJahns!) and Chloe Moretz as Tom's sister, they all performed well.

500 Days of Summer has a strange visual aspect to it, which I welcomed with open arms. There was some great scenes where hand drawn drawings were brought to the screen, representing one thing or another, and the cuts between days were done in a smart format. Everything felt as if it had been done in a kind of stylistic format, and it was nice to see someone trying to put their own stamp on the genre. I enjoyed all the fun random dance scenes, and how they were put into the story, and I loved the way the movie was told, in a nonlinear kind of way, where I never knew what was coming next, what part could be right around the corner. It was a smart and classy way of telling the story.

(500) Days of Summer is an emotional uplifting movie, which made me cry like the wimp I am! The acting is superb, the sense of realism gives you a connection to the characters which I haven't felt for ages, and the visuals and sound was really neat. (500) Days of Summer is within my top 20 favourite movies of all time and is easily a 5/5.