Movie Review – (500) Days of Summer
(500) Days of Summer was our last screening at the LA Film Festival. I saw this trailer a few months ago and couldn’t wait to see the film. The best part about the screening was that we heard at the beginning that Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, the director, and the writers would be available for a Q&A afterwards. That made the night.
The basic premise of (500) Days of Summer is in its tag line: Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t. JGL (that’s a long name to type out fully) is mindlessly going about his job when Zooey starts working there. Instantly, there’s a connection. At least for him. She is a girl who doesn’t believe in love, and wants to have a good time while she’s young. He is a hopeless romantic waiting for “the one”. Despite these wholly opposing viewpoints, they begin a relationship.
We see the relationship in fragments, not in a chronological order, but in segments like brief memories. The writers explained afterward that most people don’t remember things in the exact order they played out, but go back and forth across different moments. So the movie shows JGL’s bouncing between the good and bad memories trying to figure out where it all went wrong (it’s not a spoiler to note that it starts off at the end of their relationship). The sky grows darker with each day that’s shown. It’s not a downer movie, as there’s plenty of laughs and plenty of bright moments. Instead it’s a look at the life of a relationship and how sometimes things just don’t work out, no matter how badly one person wants it, if the other can’t reciprocate.
There were elements of fantasy mixed into the film, and a great dance number that had the audience laughing out loud. Another interesting tidbit that came from the Q&A afterwards was that it was actually a very personal story for one of the writers. As uncomfortable as he was discussing it, his writing partner was equally enthusiastic to point it out.
The crowd was great, which made the movie more enjoyable. JGL even did a backflip for everyone after an excited guy asked him, “is there anything you can’t do?”. The guy asking the question nearly fainted. I’m glad I was able to see the film as part of the festival and I can’t wait to see it again when it’s released in theaters later this summer.