(500) Days of Summer – Not a love story, in love with it anyway

Not enough movies have choreographed group dance sequences these days. And animated birds flying around the main character’s head? You typically don’t see those either – well, unless we’re talking about Snow White or a Disney movie. But the reference to the defunct series (and source of many a child of the 80s’ bad television nostalgia) Small Wonder and Vicki the Robot was what pretty much clinched it right then and there that I was in love with this movie. If I’m being honest though, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s rumpled good looks didn’t hurt, either. I admit I didn’t know what to expect from this film, I figured it would be just another romantic comedy but probably with more of an indie hipster vibe than your garden variety Jennifer Aniston flick. What I found was that it wasn’t just a romantic comedy, it had heart.

The story centers around Tom, played by Gordon-Levitt (who I’m pretty sure every girl in the theater – nay, America – is swooning over now), a former architecture student who like so many of us took a left turn in his post-college job search and finds himself years later deeply entrenched in a job as a greeting card slogan writer. This is ironic, considering he doesn’t much believe in love or storybook endings – until he meets Summer. Zooey Deschanel plays Summer, a relationship realist with saucer-like blue eyes and 1950’s housewife throwback style, who instantly has Tom entranced by her feminine wiles. Summer has been the object of many a man’s affections before Tom, and has amassed a sizeable body count of unsuspecting male suitors over the years. Let’s face it, we all know a Summer.

Despite Summer’s early disclaimer that she wasn’t looking for anything serious, Tom can’t help falling head over Converse-wearing heels for her, which is what makes the eventual dissolution of their relationship (over diner pancakes, no less) all the more heart wrenching. Even as they traded music taste in an elevator and romped playfully in pretend domestic bliss through IKEA (the new scene of 2009 movie romance – move over, Central Park and Paris), the audience can’t help but see the freight train chugging steadily toward our man Tom, and the worst part is that he is the last one to see it coming. His eventual unraveling is arguably the funniest part of an already brimming with humor film – I mean who amongst us hasn’t been inclined to remedy a broken heart by wearing a bathrobe in public and screaming at an unsuspecting couple merely holding hands to “get a room”? We’ve all been there.

Music video-turned-film Director Marc Webb and his crackerjack team of writers use two devices in (500) Days to charm the pants off all of us – raw honesty and a cleverly out of sequence calendar that toggles back and forth between scenes of Tom and Summer pre- and post-relationship nuclear winter. Plus, they pepper it with characters like the dumbass best friend and the Obi-Wan-like kid sister who doles advice out during breaks in soccer practice, and we can’t help but be won over by this remarkably accurate look at love in life’s rearview mirror. There are only two discernable aspects of (500) Days that I see as possible flaws to what I consider to be a remarkably stellar movie (and this coming from someone who is generally underwhelmed by romantic comedies). The first is a gratuitous chance to let Zooey Deschanel showcase her singing chops (?) during a borderline awkward scene of drunken office karaoke – we get it, you have an album out. And the second? The fact that I now have to admit that I have a crush on the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun.