Film Critique #1: 500 Days of Summer (Directed by Marc Webb)

500 Days of Summer
Directed by Marc Webb 2009

This is the third feature from director Marc Webb (known primary for his glossy pop-punk music videos.) The premise: Boy meets girl. Boy likes girl. Boy loves girl. However, girl is afraid of relationships. Its simple. And complicated. The film is shot in a random sequence of events that happened throughout the duration of the relationship between the boy, Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and the girl, Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel). This film had the potential to be an insightful look into the reality of lost love and the illusion of perfect relationships, but it fell short of actually saying anything profound, by completely letting everything slip in the closing moments. There were moments within the dialogue that relied far too heavily on trying to appeal to the young/hip/ironic crowd ("I love The Smiths!"), and was almost predictable in it's similarity to Juno in that regard. What I think these writers and directors are missing out on is the fact that they are trying to extract references from a culture they are either not in touch with, or are in touch with and are lazily attempting to summarize everything they have ever heard someone under the age of 25 say into one script. It's almost embarrassing. The most intense, emotional scenes relied completely on the soundtrack and warm "magic hour" lighting to provoke any feeling, and even then it felt contrived. The acting was average, except for the secondary characters, who couldn't act at all. It didn't feel real and it tried to hard to be a crowd pleaser. Summer was fickle, detached and difficult to relate to. Tom was a cliche, pathetic and dependent. The ending was disappointing because of it's lack of coherence to the story and to the characters. However, it wasn't all bad. The best scene was when the film morphed into a musical the day after Tom slept with Summer.