500 Days of Summer

• Director: Marc Webb
• Writer: Scott Neustadter, Michael Weber
• Cast: Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
• Theatrical Release Date:
• Distributor: Fox Searchlight
• Criticwire: B-
• On The Web Film WebsiteIMDB Entry

Synopsis: This is a story of boy meets girl, begins the wry, probing narrator of "500 Days of Summer," and with that the film takes off at breakneck speed into a funny, true-to-life and unique dissection of the unruly and unpredictable year-and-a-half of one young man’s no-holds-barred love affair. Tom, the boy, still believes, even in this cynical modern world, in the notion of a transforming, cosmically destined, lightning-strikes-once kind of love. Summer, the girl, doesn’t. Not at all. But that doesn’t stop Tom from going after her, again and again, like a modern Don Quixote, with all his might and courage. Suddenly, Tom is in love not just with a lovely, witty, intelligent woman – not that he minds any of that -- but with the very idea of Summer, the very idea of a love that still has the power to shock the heart and stop the world. [Synopsis courtesy of Fox Searchlight]

Round-up: In his review for Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman is overflowing with compliments and comparisons to classic indies: "It's a Gen-Y 'Annie Hall' made by a new-style Wes Anderson who uses his cleverness for hum... anity instead of postmodern superiority. None of it would work, though, without such lived-in performances. Deschanel makes the lovely, sensuous Summer just precocious enough to know what she wants without coming out and saying it, and Gordon-Levitt, with his junior Springsteenian chin jut, 
lets you read every glimmer of hope, pain, lust, and befuddlement beneath his nervy facade." In a four-star review, Chicago Sun-Times's Roger Ebert brings upa few impossibilities in the script after stating, "In romance, we believe what we want to believe. That’s the reason '500 Days of Summer' is so appealing." On Reelviews, James Berardinelli's review glows, "With romantic comedies, too often the constraints of the formula rob the movie of integrity. When something comes along like (500) Days of Summer, a willingness to deviate from the template allows the film to seem more honest and unusual than should perhaps be the case. Another departure from the norm is the script's decision to present the fantasy of romantic longing from a male perspective without an inordinate amount of sex and sophomoric behavior (differentiating it from Judd Apatow's endeavors)." Finally, in New York Magazine, David Edelstein does the unthinkable by comparing "Summer" to a studio bomb, "Compare '(500) Days' to the messed-up teen comedy 'I Love You, Beth Cooper,' adapted by Larry Doyle from his rollicking novel. The latter film is ploddingly directed, but along the way the object of the nerd hero’s fantasies, Beth Cooper (a lovely performance by Hayden Panettiere), acquires more and more complexity. And three dimensions, however dim, are more enlivening than the sparkling two of '(500) Days of Summer.'"