Typically at SpoutBlog, we rarely state the obvious when it comes to a mediocre movie, trying to instead direct our gaze toward a gem that deserves some advocacy. Unless, of course, there’s a danger that said movie is going to overshadow the much earned good buzz around a great film. Such is the case with 500 Days of Summer starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. It’s a movie I walked out of at Sundance 2009, not because it sucked, but because it was lukewarm. I figured I’d never write, “It was so-so” for a review, so I left. But in the past week it has, surprisingly, garnered ovations that threaten to eclipse so many excellent films coming out of that festival.
Case in point, it’s number one in Coming Soon’s Best of the Fest:
Clearly the biggest crowd-pleaser at this year’s festival was this romantic comedy from first-time director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael Webber, which covers a year and a half in the relationship between Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Bishl (Zooey Deschanel), the latter a flighty woman who breaks the former’s heart. While some of the ground covered is stuff we’ve seen before, the film is told in an innovative and clever narrative style, jumping around in time from the height of their developing love affair to the months that follow their break-up. Gordon-Levitt creates an infinitely likeable character that both guys and women can relate to, much like John Cusack in his heyday…. What could easily be seen as a “…Say Anything” for the younger generation, the film’s Sundance premiere received a standing ovation from the audience, and one can expect that when it opens in July, it will be another Searchlight hit in the vein of Garden State and Once.
Of course, I can’t write a “review” of a movie I didn’t fully watch. I can, however, write a review of my decision to walk out a half hour into it. In fact, I’ll use the above blurb to record what was going through my mind in the half hour before I left.
“Clearly the biggest crowd-pleaser at this year’s festival…” Must be taken with a grain of salt. A festival like Sundance combines star-spotting mania with meditative art films, wrist-slashing character studies and unsellable passion projects. So, seeing a couple stars (who happen to be seated in the audience) perform in a mildly funny comedy often brings the house down when, in a regular multiplex, the house would shrug and head to the bathroom when the credits roll.
“… from first-time director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael Webber, which covers a year and a half in the relationship between Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Bishl (Zooey Deschanel), the latter a flighty woman who breaks the former’s heart.” Deschanel’s greatness in other roles is that she can be flighty without being shallow. She has an introspective, girl next door quality that gives her romantic leads the feeling that she’s not the girl you get, she’s the girl you marry. It appears that Neustadter and Webber probably had Deschanel in mind for the part when they wrote it, but in their mind she’s Kate Hudson.
“… the film is told in an innovative and clever narrative style, jumping around in time from the height of their developing love affair to the months that follow their break-up.” Non-linear story-telling can make an already compelling story that much more compelling (Pulp Fiction, Memento). But if you take an old episode of Two Guys and A Girl and recut it with a non-linear plot, it’s still an ABC sitcom that’s easy to watch, but doesn’t compel you to laugh out loud.
“Gordon-Levitt creates an infinitely likeable character…” It’s not that he’s unlikable as much as tedious. If the male lead is a bore for at least a half hour of the movie, can you really say “infinitely likable?”
“…the film’s Sundance premiere received a standing ovation from the audience, and one can expect that when it opens in July, it will be another Searchlight hit in the vein of Garden State…” If there is one thing that Summer does have in common with Garden State, it’s that it tries to be a cinematic mix tape. But there was a certain chemistry between Zack Braff and Natalie Portman in that movie. However corny, the scene where Braff falls for Portman when she plays The Shins for him doesn’t have the screeching-brakes feeling to it that Levitt’s swoon does when Deschanel says, “Are you listening to The Smiths? I love The Smiths!”
In a lot of ways, 500 Days of Summer feels derivative of Garden State and a lot of other better romantic tweener comedies. It’s kind of like if Garden State had been turned into a TV series, recast, cancelled, then bought by USA network and restarted. Which is maybe why I felt watching half an hour was enough.
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SpoutBlog » Paul Moore