Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt play amorous co-workers in (500) Days of Summer, directed by Marc Webb. Credit Chuck Zlotnick/Fox Searchlight Pictures Early in the omniscient narrator who intermittently (and somewhat annoyingly) comments on the action cautions that the movie is “not a love story.” The print advertisements qualify his words, describing this slight, charming and refreshingly candid little picture as “a story about love.” Which it is: a story about how love can be confusing, contingent and asymmetrical, and about how love can fail. Given all this, it’s somewhat remarkable that “(500) Days,” the feature directing debut of the music video auteur Marc Webb, is neither depressing nor French. But it is, all the same, a fairly pointed response to the sorry state of romantic comedy in Hollywood, which runs the gamut from gauzily implausible fantasy to blatant and fatuous dishonesty, with an occasional detour into raunchy humor.
The governing commercial calculus these days seems to be that dudes want smut, ladies want weddings, and a picture (like say) that delivers both will make the audience happy and the studios rich. This dispensation means that more delicate, and perhaps more authentic, feelings and attitudes must be spoken about either with subtitles or, from time to time, in mumbles. So a winsome, accessible movie about more-or-less recognizable young people navigating the murky waters of post-sexual-revolutionary, midrecessionary heterosexual attraction has a novelty and a measure of bravery working in its favor, whatever its shortcomings. And “(500) Days” finds just the right scale and tone, neither trivializing nor melodramatically overstating the delicate feelings it explores. Some of the credibility that Mr. Webb’s movie establishes right away comes from its unassuming and appealing stars,. With his crooked smile, reedy physique and improbably deep voice, Mr.
Gordon-Levitt camouflages his magnetism with diffidence, much as Ms. Deschanel uses her slightly spacey, vaguely melancholy affect to magnify the charm she is pretending to disguise. Their characters, Tom Hansen and Summer Finn, seem so ideally matched, such a cozily compatible semi-hipster couple, that it’s a bit of a shock when things don’t work out between them. Advertisement Don’t worry; I haven’t given anything away.
Webb and the screenwriters, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, have scrambled the chronology so that Tom and Summer’s meet-cute and their eventual bust-up occur, in film time, close together and near the beginning. What follows is a shuffled, teasing and ingeniously structured presentation of their romance’s heady commencement, ambiguous middle and (at least for one of them) tormented aftermath. This structure restores a measure of the suspense that is usually missing from the romantic-comedy genre, which relies on climactic chases to the airport and ridiculously contrived choices between rival mates. From the outset you know, more or less, what happened between Tom and Summer, so most of your curiosity is invested in the question of how it all came to pass. The answers, in themselves, are not earthshakingly dramatic or even especially unusual. A workplace flirtation — Tom and Summer are employees of a Los Angeles greeting card company — leads to a few missed chances, a sweet first kiss and fitful progress from casual to serious.
Or so it seems to Tom, an unapologetic believer in true love, soul mates and other touchstones of greeting card mythology (and romantic comedy ideology). Summer is skeptical of such notions and refuses to promise commitment or even consistency, but she does seem to want more and more of Tom’s company, and this leads him to believe that her carefully maintained barriers to intimacy are beginning to fall. The design of “(500) Days” suggests a puzzle with a few crucial pieces left in the box. Some of this elusiveness comes from an admirable impulse to respect the enigmatic fluctuations of desire and infatuation. But there is also something tentative and half-finished about the film, which substitutes a few too many gimmicks — split screens, a musical number, that voice-over — for moments of real intensity or humor and seems a little afraid to make its main characters too interesting or idiosyncratic.
Aug 8, 2018 - Anyone who's seen the 2009 hit (500) Days of Summer knows there's a ton to love about the movie (no other rom-com features an entire dance. Watch 500 Days of Summer (2009) Full Movie Online Free, Download Free Movies Torrent 720P 1080P (500) Days of Summer. After it looks as if she's left his life for good this time, Tom Ha.