500 Days of Summer

SUMMER LOVIN': Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 500 Days of Summer.

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Marc Webb has made more music videos than pretty much any other director on the planet.

He's worked with everyone from My Chemical Romance to Carlos Santana. He's made videos I've seen and admired, and he's made videos for bands I've never even heard of.

And now, with all that pop culture and all those achingly hip friends, Webb has made his first feature film. He's cast Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in the leads, so you know he's got some indie cred. And he's working from a script that mentions Pixies and The Smiths a lot, so you can guess that the inside of his iPod is a cool and tasteful place to hang out. But what Webb hasn't done, is anything remotely new. 500 Days of Summer has all the trappings of something off-beat, original, maybe even brave.

But if you strip it back to its component parts, this really is just boy-meets-girl, again.

The boy is Levitt, and he's as good as he ever is. The girl is Deschanel, who does perky and lovable about as well as anyone since Audrey Hepburn. And the story - they meet, they date, they commit, they break up - is as old as Adam and Eve.

And that, I guess, is the big disappointment about 500 Days of Summer.

For all its Joy Division T-shirts and indie pretensions, this film is just as proscriptive, predictable, reactionary, and vaguely misogynist as "chick flicks" written by blokes always are. Deschanel's Summer gets a few strong moments, but she's never really allowed to be anything other than a surface for Levitt's Tom to bounce his insecurities off. 500 Days is alright, in a sort of Annie Hall way. But "the coolest movie of the year"? Not even close.

500 DAYS OF SUMMER
(M)
(95 mins)

Directed by Marc Webb.
Starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, Zooey Deschanel.

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hi   #2   01:14 pm Oct 09 2009

Don't know if i'd do time for her, but she's definitely my favourite female actress! And I've always had a thing for Levitt since the 3rd rock days....

guy   #1   10:06 am Oct 09 2009

I would do time for Zooey Deschanel

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