He Said, She Said: (500 Days of Summer)
By D. James Ruccio III
August 4, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Romantic comedies can have very definitive characters, story arcs and resolutions. (500) Days of Summer attempts to infuse the sometimes predictable genre with a healthy dose of art-house sensibility and present a new take on the genre. This is not your mother's Sandra Bullock romantic comedy. It's the story of Tom, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He is best known as the child actor in 3rd Rock from the Sun and 10 Things I Hate About You, along with a string of modest indie films after taking several years off to attend Columbia University. Tom is a drop-out architecture student who now writes greeting cards. He has had his first taste of defeat and is in the midst of one of those moments in life that is perhaps defining. Into his world blows the enchantress Summer Finn played by Zooey Deschanel, who is the company's new office assistant. She's whimsical, pixy-ish, funny and utterly bedevils Tom. The movie then flitters through the various phases of a relationship, which is the story and purpose of the film.
I loathed (500) Days of Summer.
Given the choice of watching this movie again and carving up my heart, scrambling it with some eggs and serving it with some chilled slices of my front lobes I might just grab the cooking implements. It is a perfect disaster of an attack of the over-indulged film student and subtly mean-spirited cynic. It grabs grubby fist-fulls of every cliché, while actually occasionally mocking others from classic films that will be long remembered after this one is destined for the no longer AMC (any cable network that shows Catwoman has lost its privilege of calling itself classic). It is either the most self-aware film or incredibly ignorant of what it's doing.
The critical faults are the characters. While Zooey Deschanel is winning in it, the character is ham fistedly written to be the muse. Just as Pearl Harbor was created with the intent of becoming The Biggest Movie Ever Made, Deschanel's character of Summer is written so obviously to be The Girl. While almost every person can quietly recall the name of their first crush, none has encountered someone so flawlessly awesome. What is odd, however, is that she's essentially a selfish personality. She makes it clear to Tom that *if* they are dating, it's a simple fling, while it is clear he feels differently early on.
Tom, equally well acted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is also written with broad, easily defined strokes. He is an Emo Ken Doll portrayed as an emotional boy with unfulfilled ambition. Only once does he attempt to question the direction of the relationship and make his feelings known. The rest of the time he is a simple audience for Summer's beaming and brilliant coolness.
The arc of their relationship is told in a non-linear fashion, which rarely works save one fairly funny combination of two scenes. The rest of it feels like a film student exercise in unnecessary complexity for its own sake. The intention of this type of story telling in this case may have been to mimic the way in which memories are recalled, that sometimes they are paired or recalled in random fashion but as a storytelling device it mostly fails here. There is one small touch in the film, however, of a split screen of one scene. One side presents a character's expectation while the other side of the screen presents the reality. It was subtly done in that some of the differences were only in a gesture or expression, whereas others were more obvious. It was a rare emotionally effective few moments of film.
The movie then stocks the supporting cast with very recognizable archetypes. There is the guy friend, Paul (played by Matthew Gray Gubler), who has been in a long standing relationship and serves as a source of male wisdom on all things Men and Women. There is the quirky, hyper-sexed, love-child-of-Steve-Buscemi-looking comedic relief friend, McKenzie (played by Geoffrey Arend). Then there is the little sister of Tom, Rachel (played by Chloe Moretz). One of the more annoying devices of recent indie films is the Little Miss Sunshine of Juno, which features child characters as super endowed with wisdom like the next incarnate of the Dalai Lama. Poor Chloe is forced to toss off one witticism after another like some walking/talking Alia Atreides throughout. It's so annoyingly persistent you wonder where the string in her back is.
The movie also loves its '80s references. The movie reminds you whenever possible just how cool the '80s were (I grew up in the '80s...it wasn't any cooler than any other decade so far). It bludgeons the audience with everything from the Knight Rider theme song to sights of Han Solo, Clash T-shirts, Hall and Oates songs and video games. We get it...it's hip to like the '80s. Leave the homage to VH1.
The soundtrack felt very much like the creators got together with their hip little group of friends and selected every little drippy piece of music that they rushed to put in their first iPods. The music perfectly fits its precious little world with the over usage of The Smiths, for example. It's as though the creators so badly want you to appreciate this music. They know it's cool and will it to the masses so that more than a few thousand will listen to it. They should, however, leave soundtracks to Cameron Crowe, who actually picks good music and knows better than most how to select the right song for the right moment (Michael Mann as well).
But I've saved the most audacious faults for last. (500) Days of Summer actually openly mocks classic indie films like The 7th Seal. The movie tortures its audience with every modern indie film device, indulges itself in every cute cliché and then attempts to playfully scoff at the movie's progenitors. The creators either have a wicked sense of self deprecating humor or are completely ignorant of how their presentation comes off.
(500) Days of Summer's greatest sin, however, is that underneath its perhaps well intended veneer of cuteness is a deep sense of cynicism and unlikeability of the characters. In many places, the movie somehow reminded me of what a mean Cameron Crowe film would be like. Much of Almost Famous, for example, explores the very same emotional landscape of power in a relationship and what happens when someone realizes they've ceded the high ground to another and is abused for it. But in that movie, the antagonist realizes that the abuse of that power is not a good thing and makes amends for it. This movie excuses Summer's behavior as simply that of a person who was honest with a partner from the beginning and isn't responsible for the emotional wreckage she creates. It blithely excuses it all by suggesting that her emotional assessment of the relationship is right and that the decisions she makes are absolute and correct. Again, I've seen more than a few traditional rom-coms where the male characters behave this way and are easily identified as the antagonist. If this were an early Bradley Cooper film, the audience would be slashing the screen. The film doesn't appreciate women or even people so much as defend their selfish behavior. It's a particularly childish view of relationships whatever the gender of the character. This is (500) Days of Summer's most glaring transgression to the audience.
They further excuse all of this by having Tom transform himself, not in a fit of "Eff Off, I'll show you!" (which as we all know is what really happens!), but in the most insulting, crotchless wonder, "Golly, she was right..." way. In the very end, his reward is so annoying cloying as to make me want to Stooge poke everyone in the credits.
(500) Days of Summer is a movie built for an audience accustomed to taking little bits of one thing and putting it next to a group of other small parts of something else. It's a movie mash-up of gender switched traditional romantic comedies, with indie sensibilities and film school tricks. It is intended to be a sweet, endearing film of the honest troubles of not so true love. It unfortunately relies on tricks from each of its sources that are well-worn even now, bathed in a lather of immature personalities. I am not in love with this movie. I will always be honest with this film and not encourage its affections. I will happily date better movies. You should, too.
Read what She Said.