If you only knew how sick and tired I am of the same ho hum romantic comedy we get starring Hugh Grant and some other boring movie star, I tell you I could go on forever. What’s so infinitely excellent about “(500) Days of Summer” is… well everything! From the get go the movie stares you right in the eyes and proclaims “No, this isn’t a romance film.” And boy howdy do they get the message across. What also helps the anti-romantic atmosphere is the casting of the always whimsical pixie Zooey Deschanel who matches wits and lines with the always excellent Joseph Gordon Levitt who by all rights isn’t your conventional romantic lead. But as always Levitt proves why he’s one of this generations excellent young actors.
Levitt is a powerhouse here as the insecure romantic who is so hung up on finding his true love that he can’t even realize the romance he’s in is just not what he wants. And yet he fights for it so adamantly and never figures out why. He even asks his little sister for help (Chloe Moretz’s performance is out of this world) who is more adept to the world than he is and works in vain at convincing him to get over his break up with Summer, a sweet saccharine young lady who pretty much has her view on relationships figured out. She wants companionship but not a suffocating romance. She has a healthy view on what romance should and knows that it simply isn’t for her.
Marc Webb’s film is the anti-romance, one that doesn’t focus on the start of a new relationship but in getting someone to move past an old relationship and find a way and a reason to move on and look for something better. What Webb chronicles beyond moving on with your life is the power and inspiration true love can provide for us. It’s as rewarding as it is punishing and it becomes almost a life form that gives us a reason to live and move forward. Webb and co. take constant shifts between time lines to establish what we’ve already seen through different forms while also exploring what after effects a break up can have on us from stalking to just trying to surround ourselves with satisfaction that another good love will come along if we wait patiently. Levitt embodies the jilted lover with such awe and dexterity that he almost feels like he’s become the embodiment of these emotions of sadness and desperation.
In fact every single character in the piece is a symbol of something involving our search for romance and the film never hesitates to implement these elements and take a truly jarring look at romance and how most of what we’ve heard about it are complete lies. “(500) Days of Summer” is a truly excellent film about our search for happiness in an unforgiving world with performances that mark it as the best romantic dramedy of 2009. Presenting an original view of romances and break ups to the tune of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” Marc Webb’s anti-romance is a near perfect genre defying representation of relationships, infatuation, and getting over the first real love of your life. Oh and did we forget to mention the groovy musical number?