(500) Days of Summer (2009)

Product of Fox Searchlight Pictures, Watermark, and Sneak Preview Entertainment.
Directed by Marc Webb
Starring Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Geoffrey Arend, and Matthew Grey Gubler.

"This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know upfront, this is not a love story."  This movie is nothing short of a love story, yet its a chick flick with a sense of humor.  Boy meets girl who now works in his office, girl says she doesn't believe in love and serious relationships, boy falls in love with girl, girl just wants to be friends, guy is broken-hearted, you know the rest. This movie is about how they met, how they lived, and how they parted.


There are three emotions in this film.  Hysterical laughter, overwhelming anger, and.... were missing a big one here... oh yeah, awkward and almost bipolar love over the course of a jumpy five hundred days.  There are instances where you can honestly relate to all three.  If you can't, then you need to come out from under the rock you happen to be under, and find yourself something to love.  For those of us that can't do that, well, pray.

The apparent star of this movie is NOT Zooey Deschanel, as much as I hate to admit it.  Its Heath Ledger.  Or the guy that looks a lot like Heath Ledger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  Gordon-Levitt plays Tom, the lovable and adorable (What?  I'm comfortable with my sexuality.)  His character is that everyday, normal, average Joe, other than the fact that his friends think the world of him.  His character is charming, funny, yet down-trodden and pessimistic.  His counterpart, the role of Summer, went to Katy Perry, a.k.a. Zooey Deschanel, who, in the movie, has indeed kissed a girl and she liked it.  Her character is a happy-go-lucky assistant from Michigan who is a free spirit and intends on keeping it that way.  She knows how to have fun, how to defend herself, and how to act completely against her gender.  Oh, and how to show a guy that she doesn't really honestly care for him at all, after all.  So if you want to see a movie about what would happen if Heath Ledger and Katy Perry dated, see this movie.

This is the second movie in a row where I've watched a movie by a director I've never heard of.  This tends to happen.  Oh, and world?  Be on the lookout for my friend named Rannikar.  She'll be taking Hollywood by storm here in the next couple decades or so.  The characters in this movie are so utterly believable, which is something I never ever say after watching a chick flick.  Only near the end, at about 127:00, does it start to get a little over the top.  Anyways, the characters are so believable to the point where you can actually relate to what they're feeling.  The love/cuddle scenes are so intimate that you would think that these two have off-screen chemistry or something.  Although the characters are directed well and I give props to the director as well as the actors, the writers and editors deserve just as much.  From the witty comments, strange acts, and playing the penis game, to the edits where different scenes pop in and out following one character's comment, much like an episode of "Family Guy."  (After reading IMDb, I find that this is in fact Webb's first feature length film, having directed a plethora of music videos... The writer admits in the commentary that 75% of what he wrote for this film actually happened to him... And Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel have had experience together, working on "Maniac" in 2001.)

I enjoyed this movie very much to say the least.  I was attracted by the humor and hooked by the emotion and entertained by the characters as if they were my friends telling me their side of the story firsthand.  The humor was my kind of humor but there is no way to describe it other than to see it for yourself.  I give this movie a high A, though not quite an A+, because there is always something that can be done a bit better.  For instance, a slight move away from the stereotypical chick flick for the last half hour of the movie and this would have received a perfect score from me.

"Darling, I don't know how to tell you this... but there's a Chinese family in our bathroom." -- Tom