Mutual Admiration of The Smiths is Apparently Not a Strong Enough Foundation Upon Which to Build a Relationship…Or How I Learned To Quit Worrying and Love “500 Days of Summer.”
© A.J. Malouin 2009
(Ratings: 5 by Patsy; 5 by Caryl; 13 by The Film Snob.)
(See our side-bar page “How Caryl & Al and The Film Snob Rate Movies”)
(2009/USA. Directed by Marc Webb.)
Patsy of Farmington Hills, Michigan, USA, had a great time with this movie. As the back-to-back winner of the 2008 and 2009 Oscar Guess Fest Trophy, Patsy’s assessment of movies is Not To Be Quarreled With (although The Film Snob insists on doing so, during the tail-end of this review, which no one will ever read.)
Patsy reports that “500 Days of Summer.” was outstanding…and it was so without having to resort to watching people having sex and/or swearing a lot. The movie was very cute. The characters were adorable and the situations were ones to which anyone can relate. (Who hasn’t been wildly in love with someone who was “not that in to you?”) To top it off, the movie had such a happy ending. It clearly gives hope to anyone who has loved and lost. It also gives meaning to those unbalanced relationships we tend to find ourselves in on occasion. Go and see it.”
Caryl saw this movie separately, and also rated it a “5.” She said the Hero-guy was a loser but that he eventually found himself, and that the thing was therefore a wonderful experience. Caryl, also, would say, “Go and see this movie.”
The Film Snob, OTOH, suggests that the viewer should impale his- or herself on two Frozen Margaritas (over 21 only, Please!) before attempting to sit through the 19 and one-half hours of the 95 minutes of the “500 Days of Summer.”
Here’s the deal. This dweeb of a guy meets a girl who thinks he’s “fun,” but tells him right up front that she is not interested in a having long-term relationship (with him.) She uses the American language and he is an American citizen— and yet it takes him 500 days to understand what she said from Day One.
Along the way, this dweeb is supported by his two male dweeb friends, who are just as clueless regarding dating, women, and (probably) bus schedules as our dumb mooning Hero is. It’s the stupid premise of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” alllllll over again, with the saving grace that our dumb mooning Hero here is not Actually still playing with Action Figures.
Our hero in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and our in this similar thing are both wounded, but they are wounded, to The Film Snob’s way of thinking, in ways that elicit neither empathy nor sympathy. There are no touching moments in “500 days…” that rip open our Hero and re-carve him into a man instead of the banana that he is.[1.]
He is just a cartoonish goofball whom the movie asks us to care about.
That any of these three dweebs in “500 Days of Summer” would have a thought or a line on the lyrics of Morrissey is just Too Precious of a concept to sell the audience. None of these three dweebing blips are “edgy” enough to catch a ticket on that train.
Further, the fact that Belle & Sebastian are mentioned in the script is a musical name-dropping that splats like an ink-filled water balloon back out there in the lobby behind us as the 500 years of Summer drones on front of us.
Summer says she’s “not interested.” Okay. (The Film Snob has been there. Last Christmas, actually.) End of movie. Move on, dweeb.
In the last set piece, our Hero DOES move on. He moves on (he hopes) from a girl named “Summer” to a girl named “Autumn.” The thing about this incredibly happy ending is that…
In space, no one can hear you scream.
(1 hr 35. Rated PG-13 in the USA for sexual material and language. In English. With Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Tom Hansen, Zooey Deschanel as Summer Finn, Geoffrey Arend as McKenzie, Chloe Moretz as Rachel Hansen, Matthew Gray Gubler as Paul, Clark Gregg as Vance, Patricia Belcher as Millie, Rachel Boston as Alison, Minka Kelly as Autumn, and Ian Reed Kesler as Douche.)
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1. This is a concept inspired by a character’s line of dialogue in “Happy Birthday, Wanda June, a play by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. The line of dialogue?!?? “I could carve a better man out of a banana.”