(500) Days Of Summer

I was really apprehensive about seeing this movie, I thought it could be a trying to hard to be quirky Juno-style disaster. Much to my surprise this move was delightful! It had it's moments that were pushing the quirk to hard (the precocious advice dispensing younger sister comes to mind), but most of the film was postitivley delightful, spending time with Summer and Tom was a lot of fun, and the unique directorial choices kept me engaged. A musical number, the split screen, the non-linear time line, the narration, somehow all these elements which can be obnoxious separately mesh together to paint a beautiful rich portrait of a relationship within Tom's mind.

Unlike traditional rom-coms (500) Days Of Summer doesn't pretend that it's giving you a mixed perspective, we only see Summer through Tom's eyes, we don't know about her childhood or what she does when she's not with Tom, or what she yearns to be in life. All we know is what she said to Tom, the limited amount of herself that she shared, and that, to me, was very interesting. This ambiguity allowed for a beautiful sequence in which the same montage of shots, when played twice with different music and at a different point in the film painted Summer as a beautiful to-good-to-be-true angel, and a selfish cold bitch.

Give (500) Days Of Summer a shot, it's a sweet August movie that will make you smile.