Every now and then a summer romance comedy/drama comes along that makes you forget why you hated them in the first place—500 Days of Summer is one such remarkable film.
From its clever opening and ominous, narrative exposition, the viewer is enchanted and enamored by the story’s two irresistibly adorable main characters, Tom Hansen and Summer Finn–enlivened by inspired performances by Joseph Gordon—Levitt and Zooey Deschanel.
Along with his inspired cast, the director, Marc Webb, deftly utilizes presentational style, nonlinear storytelling, and countless apropos allusions to French New Wave cinema classics to render the most compelling, bittersweet love story since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Though the presentational style begs the viewer for more than a modicum of suspension of disbelief, it does so in such an artistic and unexpected way that it brilliantly underscores the movie’s modern-world-romance motifs without rendering an overt manipulation of the viewer. Additionally the nonlinear plot structure further underpins the characters’ plights, and feelings—revolutionizing the conveying of emotions, without a jarring interruption to the flow of the film or the audience’s enjoyment of it.
Juxtapose the unique storytelling style with painfully realistic renderings of dialogue delivered by inspired actors, and you have a “non-formulaic” formula for a modern, hip, and magical romantic tale that is sure to be a reel classic.
Cut and Reel says: REEL!
