(500) DAYS OF SUMMER

FOX

RELEASED 4 September 2009

‘(500) Days of Summer’ is the kind of rom-com that only comes along once every blue moon - if we’re lucky. ‘Juno’, ‘Slumdog’, it’s one of these kinds of movies. You know why? Because it tries to do things a little bit differently. Originality in art is a rare thing, and cinema is no exception.

Greeting card creative Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) believes in ‘the one’, a soulmate. The narrator solemnly announces this stems from ‘early exposure to sad British pop music and a total misreading of the movie ‘The Graduate’. Receptionist Summer Finn (Zooey Deschannel) doesn’t share that feeling, ever since the disintegration of her parents marriage. So when Tom falls for Summer in the company office they both work in, it looks like there’s going to be a problem. Especially as the second scene (Day 240, the narrative continually flips back and forth over 500 days) is Tom being consolled on his breaking-up with Summer (by his 12-year old sister, just to put him down a little bit more!) Cue ninety minutes of what happened in the relationship and just what does day 500 hold?

Director Marc Webb has crafted such an original, creative romantic movie that it seems a bit insulting to term it a rom-com, as it’s far superior to that staid genre. So I won’t! Utilising quirky film elements like the aforementioned flashback, a dual-screen ‘ideal world’ / ‘reality’ reunion scene between the two ex-lovers, and the film’s highpoint, a song-and-dance number for Tom where he becomes part of a big musical-style, ‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks’-type performance alonside postmen and hand-drawn bluebirds, all to the strains of Hall and Oates ‘You Make My Dreams Come True’.

As much as the first-time director has given us a unique movie, so have the writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. Tom: What happens when you fall in love? Summer: You believe in that? Tom: It's love, it's not Santa Claus. It’s witty, realistic, charming, genuine, and doesn’t settle for an easy cop-out ending. It does something much better.

Although Gordon-Levitt has been acting all his life (best-known as long-haired Tommy of ‘3rd Rock From the Sun’), I’d never have thought he’d make such a great leading man. He’s absolutely fantastic here, and although Zooey Deschannel is as gorgeous and loveable as ever, it’s GL’s Tom that I really fell in love with (in a non-sexual, filmic sense of course). You’re rooting for him all the way, and after years of unremarkable roles, I’m eager to see him blossom as a performer.

‘(500) Days of Summer’ is the best romantic movie of the year, and I rate it highly enough to stand alongside the likes of ‘Before Sunrise’, ‘An Affair to Remember’, and ‘Brokeback Mountain’.

FIVE OUT OF FIVE