(500) Days of Summer (M) 
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This clever and charming romantic comedy is a smart, amusing, original and affecting arrow through the heart.
At its beginning, narrator Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) explains that while this is a boy-meets-girl movie, it's "not a love story". But that's exactly what it is all about: Love – with a thought or two on fate.
Tom is a romantic believer in true love and thinks he's found his soulmate in Summer (Zooey Deschanel), a free spirit who believes there's no such thing as love and that relationships are inevitably messy and people end up getting hurt.
The hop-scotching story – imaginatively and effectively using animation and song-and-dance – flashes back and forward to tell whether Tom wins Summer over. As fresh as springtime, this romantic comedy defies Hollywood saccharine conventions and, recently, the ribald emphasis of sex comedies.
It's wonderfully free of sentimentality and vulgarity, and resonates with honesty and authenticity, its screenplay knowing not only the swoon of love but the real world of fickle romance.
- Reviewed by David Manning, DVDs for review supplied by United Video, Nelson.
- © Fairfax NZ News
