Review of (500) Days of Summer (2009) by Dana L — 15 Dec 2012

Whenever I can hear the writer use his characters to try to give us the "meaning of life" I feel an unease immediately. (500) Days of Summer is a great little film that could but ultimately it falls short for me in a couple of areas.

Coincidence and fate are tricky things to express in a hour and half, and this movie doesn't do it for me. What's worse is that when you put love in the mix it gets harder, and when you dabble in true love, well that's a recipe for disaster if I ever saw one.

I particularly didn't like the non linear storytelling because I could almost sense I wasn't gonna get the film I signed up for. Playing with perception in films is one of my favorite things that filmmakers can do, and Webb just blows it.

I should have been given the story straight, and then I would have been tempted to watch it again to look for the little things that could have been signs that their love story wasn't gonna work out.

The story is at times honest, but also frustrating, because that's all there is really, the direction isn't much, and the acting is pretty nonexistent, it seems to me that Zooey just shoved up and said her lines like in every other movie she's in.

So when Summer implodes and then goes on to marry some anonymous dude, that is frustrating for me, because we as the audience have to be able to see that switch go of in her head, and we have to be able to compare it to the switch not going of when she was with Tom.

That kind of shortchanging is what disappoints me the most. It's an interesting film, but for me it comes of as stylish without substance, and it could have been more.