Film Review: A youthful romp, 'Summer' has a few quality issues

Photo by Fox Searchlight Pictures

Opposites Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel have a go at relating for a while in "(500) Days of Summer."Chuck Zlotnick

I have a theory that most movies are best viewed between the ages of about 12 and 16 -- and not just juvenile pictures like the "Transformers" sequel.

Beifuss at the Movies

Movie Reviews

Photo by Fox Searchlight Pictures

Opposites Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel have a go at relating for a while in "(500) Days of Summer."Chuck Zlotnick

(500) Days of Summer

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn't. This post modern love story is never what we expect it to be--it's thorny yet exhilarating, ...

Rating: PG-13 for sexual material and language

Length: 95 minutes

Released: August 7, 2009 Nationwide

Cast: Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Clark Gregg, Minka Kelly, Matthew Gray Gubler

Director: Marc Webb

Writer: Scott Neustadter, Michael Weber

More info and showtimes »

If I'd seen "(500) Days of Summer" when I was in junior high, Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) probably would be my dream girl for life. Seeing it in middle age, however, I find myself alternately irritated and intrigued by Summer's pop-eyed, cute-as-a- bug's-ear, levelheaded-yet- tenderhearted (she loves Ringo) persona, which the script not only describes as irresistible but diagnoses as "the Summer effect." In fact, the script tells us that Summer's quotation of a Belle & Sebastian lyric in her high school yearbook resulted in an otherwise inexplicable spike in sales of "The Boy with the Arab Strap" in Michigan, and if those references are meaningless to you, you're not part of the movie's hipper-than-thou target demographic; but if you do comprehend all the movie's incessant pop/art allusions (from "Knight Rider" to Oscar Wilde), you may consider yourself hipper than them, so where does that leave you? What a conundrum!

And let me ask: Are there really hipster karaoke bars where one can perform songs by the Pixies and Lee Hazlewood, as happens here, or by the Velvet Underground, as in "Away We Go"? Or did the filmmakers in both these cases sacrifice believability for shout-outs of "coolness"?

As should be obvious, I'm conflicted over "(500) Days of Summer," the latest in what has become almost a mini-genre of youth-oriented, self-consciously "indie" romantic comedies. (Previous examples include "Away We Go," "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," "Adventureland," "Garden State" -- in which the young couple bonded over the Shins instead of the Smiths, as happens in "Summer" -- and even "Juno.")

Directed by feature newcomer Marc Webb, from an overwritten script (the voiceover narration is utterly unnecessary) by Scott Neudstadter and Michael H. Weber, the movie has much to recommend it. For one thing, the lead male character, Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), is shy and even gentlemanly, which is not just a novelty but a relief in this Age of Apatow. On the other hand, Tom is a trained architect who dreams of constructing beautiful plazas, yet he's employed as a writer of superficial verse by a greeting-card company; that's just too much job symbolism for one character to shoulder.

Hopping about as if at random through the improvised calendar of its title, "(500) Days of Summer" chronicles Tom's relationship with Summer, an office newcomer, which builds from mild interest to wary flirtation to infatuation to, perhaps, love and finally breakup. This paragraph gives nothing away: The movie lets us know from the start that Tom and Summer don't stay together, and our awareness of the hopelessness of the relationship adds interest to the chronologically fractured vignettes. Tom is the romantic of the duo, a young man who longs for connection; Summer is the skeptic who claims she doesn't believe in love. Most viewers will be able to identify with both characters from time to time.

As in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall," an obvious influence, "(500) Days of Summer" occasionally veers into fantasy. In one scene, Tom imagines himself the hero in a series of art-film spoofs; another sequence expands into a full-blown musical number set to a hit by Hall and Oates. Another influence, frequently alluded to in the film, is "The Graduate"; "(500) Days of Summer" is, in a way, an attempt to imagine what happened to Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross after they got off the bus.

-- John Beifuss: 529-2394

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