(500) Days of Summer (2009)

User Rating:

8.2/10   

Director:

Marc Webb

Writers (WGA):

Scott Neustadter (written by) &
Michael H. Weber (written by)

Release Date:

4 September 2009 (UK)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn't.

Plot:

An offbeat romantic comedy about a woman (Deschanel) who doesn't believe true love exists, and the young man (Gordon-Levitt) who falls for her. |

Plot Keywords:

Punctuation In Title | Digit In Title | Number In Title | Character Name In Title

Cast

Joseph Gordon-Levitt	...	Tom
Zooey Deschanel	...	Summer
Geoffrey Arend	...	McKenzie
Chloe Moretz	...	Rachel
Matthew Gray Gubler	...	Paul
Clark Gregg	...	Vance
Patricia Belcher	...	Millie
Rachel Boston	...	Alison
Minka Kelly	...	Girl at Interview
Ian Reed Kesler	...	Douche
Darryl Alan Reed	...	Bus Driver
Valente Rodriguez	...	Employee #1
Yvette Nicole Brown	...	New Secretary
Nicole Vicius	...	Partygoer
Natalie Boren	...	Another Partygoer

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for sexual material and language.

Runtime:

95 min

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

SDDS | Dolby Digital | DTS

Certification:

USA:PG-13 | Australia:M | South Korea:15

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Trivia:

The film's blue-centric color scheme was done to bring out Zooey Deschanel's eyes.

Quotes:

Tom: What happens when you fall in love?
Summer: You believe in that?
Tom: It's love, it's not Santa Claus.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The 81st Annual Academy Awards (2009) (TV)

A love story deftly built on unrequited love.

I haven't seen a romance this touching since I was the same type of single sad sack as depicted by the hero of (500) Days of Summer.

Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has his radar up for "the girl of his dreams" when he meets Summer (Zooey Deschanel). Too bad for Tom Summer is stuck on friends-with-benefits mode. Let the tension begin.

Director Marc Webb captures the feeling of innocent, naïve love expertly. Anyone who has taken the lyrics of the Smiths too closely to heart, would be moved by the idea of the person they are crushing on sing to them: "To die by your side/is such a heavenly way to die." No wonder Tom soon falls head over heels for this girl.

As events unfold out of sequence, you know all along Tom has fallen for a time bomb of a woman, and he can't even see the countdown. When that bomb finally blows up in his face, it unfolds with powerful simplicity-- no exposition or dialog, just two juxtaposed events that capture the heartache of reality hitting a person who sees a person through the filter of some deep-seeded emotions that where planted at too young an age.

So many romantic films nowadays concern themselves with cute ideas, take 'He's Just Not That Into You' or 'Serendipity' for example. Then there are movies like 'Knocked Up' where a pot-smoking, video-gaming playing narcissistic slob tries to turn his life around to try and be a father. These movies forget about real people. Who cares about stock or cartoonish characters in love. The couple in (500) Days of Summer have true chemistry. There are some beautiful, subtle moments of tenderness as well some heart-rending moments of disconnectedness between the two that never comes across as heavy-handed. The movie constantly reminds you that these are two different people with different ideas of a relationship, yet they stubbornly continue their dating, and they remain lovable all the same.

An omniscient narrator sets the film up early on by noting "this is not a love story," but few films ever capture the sensation of falling in love as well as this movie does.