(500) Days of Summer!!!!

Thanks to some good fortune (and a head's up from A-Rab), I was able to see an advanced screening of (500) Days of Summer tonight with my two favorite film buffs. One of the writers graduated from Syracuse, and I was actually able to hear him speak about the film and his experiences in the industry this past semester. The anticipation had been building, and I hoped I would not leave the theater in disappointment.

I am happy to say that overall I was not disappointed. On the contrary, I liked the film a lot. It pushed the boundaries of what constitutes a romantic comedy in a smart and edgy manner. The film is both laugh out loud funny and gutwrenchingly emotional. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel gave wonderfully realistic portrayals of two very different, but very real characters. Gordon-Levitt's performance especially stood out. He's an extremely talented actor with an ease and charm that is both relatable and admirable. He does a great job of making the audience care deeply about his character to the point where we are rooting for him even though we've been told from the beginning he will fail. The rest of the cast is also very good.

The film looked amazing. It was very visually appealing. I loved the blue and brown color scheme, which I have not seen too often before (though I guess if you count brown as a desaturation of red/orange, than it as certainly been used before i.e. Traffic). The cinematography was beautiful. There were a lot of interesting shots and techniques used, which might be attributed to the fact that the director, Mark Webb, got his start in music videos. Some might say it was too showy, but I thought it only made the film more interesting.

What really drives this film is a simple, but well-told story about a relationship where one person is in love and the other is not. This is a real story that happens to people every day, but romantic comedies tend to focus on people falling in love, instead of what people learn from relationships, especially the failed ones. It's funny because I was talking to a friend the other day about how most romantic comedies are the so far fetched and untrue to life. How do those writers write that crap?! I wonder if a new generation of romantic comedy writers will arise with stories that are actually real. Maybe then most women in America won't obsess with finding the one, but that's a rant for another time. Anyway, I liked how there weren't any sappy overly long monologues (there may have been one at the end, but it was actually good and not sappy); these were replaced by dialogue that felt true to life between characters that felt like real people.

The only thing I truly despised was the very, very, very end. If you see the film, talk to me about what you think of the end because I was so perturbed. The amount of music might have been overkill too. It felt like it never stopped, but that didn't bug me too much.

Anyway, go see it. I highly recommend it. Rom-Com's don't have to suffer the fate of cheesy jokes, lame storylines and Matthew McConaughey!!

I couldn't decide, which movie poster I liked best, so I put them all up.

Peace,

Kim