Movie summary of 500 Days Of Summer by Michael The Moviegoer.
500 DAYS OF SUMMER = ***1/2
“Calculating A New Formula For Romantic Comedies”
The narrator cautions us that this is NOT a love story. And indeed it’s not. An enchanting Zooey Deschanel plays a girl named Summer (hence the title, and the set-up to one of the funniest last lines in movie history). Summer hooks up with Tom, a boy who works in her office as a writer of greeting cards. Summer doesn’t believe in love and does not want a boyfriend. That doesn’t stop her from having an intimate relationship with Tom.
Tom ends up falling in love with Summer even though she doesn’t share his romantic feelings. Therefore, the movie can’t really be a love story, but it is a story about love. It’s also a heartbreaking portrait of the pain that results from a one-sided love.
Director Marc Webb takes a fresh approach to this material by presenting the various chapters of their relationship all out of order. He also has fun with split-screen framing, spontaneous choreography to the Hall & Oates classic “You Make My Dreams”, and he even gives a shout-out to Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”.
The conflict in their romance is evident early on. Tom’s greeting card poetry-writing job makes him the ultimate romantic. A true believer in the lyrics of love songs and movies like “Sleepless In Seattle”. But Summer’s romantic outlook is bleak. She’s commitment-phobic as a result of her parents’ divorce. It’s clear just how screwed up she is when she announces that Ringo is her favorite Beatle.
It’s interesting that this film is being labeled a “romantic comedy” when Tom’s situation seems more painful than funny. But the movie works because of a smart script, winning performances, and the fresh presentation of conventional material.
DVD Double-Feature: One of the best moments in ‘500 Days’ comes when Tom quits his job by delivering a speech about the lies perpetrated in greeting card sayings. It reminded me of Dudley Moore’s attack-of-conscience meltdown in 1990’s “Crazy People”. Moore plays an advertising executive who suddenly believes that ads should tell the truth about products. He is then committed to a mental hospital where he recruits the other patients to help turn the hospital into a successful advertising agency.
Michael The Moviegoer
