500 Days of Summer

Are there enough joyous, happy, wonderful adjectives to describe 500 Days of Summer? This movie was funny, touching, had an adorable cast, a kick-ass soundtrack and a musical number! Forget Harry Potter; this is the summer movie that has it all.

Zooey Deschanel is taking over as the new indie Parker Posey. Her lipid blue eyes and kewpie doll pout demands that you look at her every time she’s on screen. It’s almost like no other actor could compete with her until…Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He has a tour-de-force performance here as the poor lovesick shlub to Deschanel’s free-spirited nymph.

The narrator tells us from the beginning that the story of Tom and Summer is not going to be a happy one, but the ride is still enjoyable.

We watch as Tom (Gordon-Levitt) tries to win Summer (Deschanel) over to be as madly in love with him as he is with her. This seems like a lost cause, as Summer is as free-spirited as her names implies. She doesn’t believe in love at first sight, marriage, or soul-mates. She’ll never be able to give Tom what he needs or wants in a relationship, but that doesn’t keep him from trying to convert her.

This is really Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s movie. If his character comes off as too much of a loser, he’ll just be pathetic to the audience. Instead, Tom is funny, smart and the new person I want to keep in my hip pocket. He’s the kind of guy you want to fix up with your friends because he’s so sweet. He’s so into Summer, and the fact that she’s distant makes him want her all the more. In typical fashion, if she was as available as he wanted, he probably wouldn’t be as obsessed.

We watch as their relationship jumps around from day 1 to day 260 and all across the board. We see good times and bad times. We see scenes of their relationship that we don’t understand at first, but then as the other days build, or we are glimpsed to the past or future, it all makes sense. All the jumping around is not a distraction; rather, it becomes a well woven web, a kaleidoscope of when things go right in a relationship, and also when they go horribly wrong. When we reminisce, it’s certainly not in chronological order.

It’s been a long time since I wanted to see a movie again, but I’m trying to find an excuse to run back to the theater for another 500 days with Summer…and Tom.