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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).

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