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Fans of Box Office Prophets' He Said/She Said (one hopes we have fans...) may know that more often than not that I (the he) and my best friend "Caroline Thibodeaux" (the she) have similar takes on most films. We as a movie review couple work very hard at not discussing most films after seeing them and before writing the review. However, we have similar sensibilities and therefore often have commonalities in our reviews. We both work hard to make this particular column entertaining and we both know that sometimes people may want to see some fireworks in these columns. While we haven't discussed (500) Days of Summer in detail I suspect you may, Happy Reader, have what you've come looking for. I know how I feel about this film (and you will too in the coming paragraphs) and I know that when I looked over at The Caroline I saw a very engaged viewer.

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.

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