500 (Days of Summer)

As the narrator tells the audience, this is a story about boy meets girl. But you are mistaken if you think this is a story about love. Now we all know the rom-com formula, so say it with me: Boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl breaks up with boy, boy and girl make up. Yay. Happy ending. And you find these aspects in (500) Days of Summer, and it certainly does fall under this category, but if I were ever to suggest a rom-com to one of my fellow brethrens, this would be the one (well, maybe Midnight in Paris, but that's not truly a rom-com either). The point is that if you didn't know better, a quick check on IMDB for a summary of the film would make it sound forgettable, but I am here to tell you that there is a bunch worth watching.

Right from the start the film sets the quirkier tone of the humor to play out. And not only is it pretty darn rootin' tootin' funny to me, but the overall clever framework and setups have a broad paint stroke on who it will appeal to. To get the basis down, the film jumps back and forth through the 500 days, and it quickly shows the breakup around day 290. Well, if it just skipped to step #3 of the 4 in rom-coms, why should we bother watching the entire film?

Now I could be cheesy and say, “Oh, but the story of how they fell in love is worth the watch!” Now that wouldn't want you to watch it, me to watch it, or really anybody who has a better way to spend an hour and a half. Luckily, as the narrator suggested, that's not the point of the film. Yes there's solid chemistry between Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel (even if she plays the same carefree, do whatever she wants type of girl in every film), but really the money hits the mark in a couple of standout scenes. I'm talking about the dance number and the expectations vs. reality. And you may have no idea what I'm referring to if you haven't watched the film, and that's okay. All I'm trying to say is that there is actually a script here that takes a story told a thousand times and projects it in multiple appealing ways.

From beginning till end, you will be watching the film happily instead of either taking a nap and pretending to have cared about the past hour or preparing the tissues and triple chocolate ice cream. It's an enjoyable film with a good soundtrack-- not much more you can ask.

I might decide for next week to throw it back to Quentin Tarantino's early days. There's a whole bunch you can discuss with that guy, so I might as well start somewhere.