(500) Days of Summer Post-Release Discussion

I could see it being influential in the sense that a lot of the techniques it uses will brought more to the maintstream. Personally I loved it and didn't mind Deschanel (granted I've had limited exposure to her though.) The 'wiser-than-her-years' sister didn't bug me as I felt it went along with everything else in the film.

Good film, I loved it, but it's not as good as HURT LOCKER, MOON, UP, or ANVIL.

The sequence with what he wants to happen and what does happen, and the music number. I can see an up and comer looking at that and wanting to copy it, even if it's been done previously before this.

Used to like that movie at first, but it's kind of annoying now.

But yeah, those were two great sequences. The movie operates on it's own terms which I liked (i.e. - the know-it-all ten year old, the song and dance, etc.)

I pretty much loved it. I related to it closer than any other "relationship" film I've seen. It was pretty rough watching it, honestly. I was surprised at how damn funny it was though. More laugh out loud moments for myself, and the crowd, than I've come across in a while. I feel bad for Jenny Beckman. I went back and checked out Devin's review, remembering it being lukewarm, but I think I understand the film's decision to not give us insight as to why Summer was so endearing to Tom. This was Tom's story, not Summer's, and we've all been with people that we were infatuated with for reasons no one else saw. At least, that reasoning made sense to me.

Can you link to that Q&A Nooj? I guess I missed it.

I think part of the difficulty for any love story is identifying why someone really falls or another person. So many tiny details and idiosyncrasies, and I think the script did a pretty good job at filling us in.

I have way too much baggage to review this movie objectively, but right now I feel it isn't a wart on the ass of Eternal Sunshine.

A good idea of a film trapped inside something terribly inferior. Neither character is very engaging, and Devin's absolutely right that Summer is kept at a distance. We're never able to fall in love with her, so we didn't get invested with him. Also...non-stop songs (I don't care how good or "cool" they are) is always a sign of a film really trying to save itself. This was like a next-gen Sleepless in Seattle with all the goddamn music. Give it a rest, soundtrack...

The Han Solo joke owned, though.

Didn't like this at all. Post-modern stylistic quirks do not a good film make. It's not charmless, but it's not as engaging or insightful as it needs to be, and it hits all the familiar plot points and cliches, including Summer's final, absurd development, which was telegraphed but still made no sense at all.

There's not as much separating this from your standard mainstream romantic comedy as you might think. It just has a better soundtrack.

It was alright. Nothing we haven't seen before. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was solid. The ending was way too cute and tidy.

No shit. This movie would have won back a lot of ill will from me had he ended up NOT meeting another Hot Girl at the end. That kind of negated the half-assed "self-improvement" theme they were shooting for.

It's so nakedly going after the title of This Generation's Annie Hall it's hard to take it at face value. That coupled with the cliched and crammed in stylistic "flourishes" (WHY do people this young have home movies that look like they're shot on Super-8? Because EVERY movie's home videos look that way) makes the whole thing feel downright dishonest.

I thought going in I would AT LEAST like it more than Garden State. I think they're about equal, honestly.

Except Alvy Singer doesn't find a beautiful soulmate named "Fanny Corridor" at the end to brighten his outlook.

LOL AUTUMN

this movie is too cool for school

why it wasn't set in williamsburg will forever puzzle me

Bingo. Minka Kelly is one of the hottest women around. It's as if Alvy had met Farrah Fawcett at the end.

The movie is called 500 Days of Summer. Meaning the 500 days when this girl named Summer was having an impact on his life, thoughts, and feelings. Do people honestly think that the movie should have him getting completely over Summer before meeting someone else? Yea sure that'd be nice, but how often does that happen in real life, at least when it comes to someone who impacts you the way Summer did Tom?

Remember at the end of Annie Hall Alvy wasn't over Annie. His days of Annie were still continuing. (At least I think that's how it was).

Not to say I'm completley happy with the ending. The movie buying into the idea of "fate" at the end really bugged me.

JGL almost makes me want to see G.I. Joe in the theaters after this. Hope he gets a big film soon.

Zooey/JGL dancing
It's a video with the 2 dancing to one of her songs. Reminds me a bit of Weapon of Choice video.

I can't see how anyone can't enjoy this movie. People are seriously expecting for this to be as good or better than Annie Hall? Give me a break. It's only similarities is that it takes place in New York, and is about a relationship of a guy who falls in love with a woman with issues. Not every movie has to be profound or be a game-changer for its genre to be considered good.

In regards to the soundtrack, I thought it was not jarring or overdone. The music added to the story in parts and was varied enough that I did not mind it at all. It wasn't like Garden State or Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, in that it was placed in the film just to let you know how hip or cool it was. Complaining about the use of music in this movie is like complaining about the use of Simon and Garfunkel in The Graduate.

All of the actors in the film do a solid job with the material. The movie is funny and charming. And even if it's not entirely original (although some of the filmed sequences were pretty creative), it was a refreshing take on a pretty stale genre. Maybe (500)Days of Summer is not as good as Annie Hall, but I would put it on the same level as When Harry Met Sally.

This movie takes place in LA, but even if it was set in NYC that wouldn't be the only similarity between it and Annie Hall. It's clearly heavily influenced by Allen's classic. Despite that I'm in the apparent minority of people here who really like it.

I liked it fine enough. It was cute, and that was about it. The movie peaked for me, though, with the Han Solo cameo and the Expectations/Reality split-screen. I've got to give it some props, though, it remained cute without ever really becoming cloying.

I had remembered Devin's review being lukewarm but couldn't really remember why. The entire car ride home I was thinking about how Summer was a non-entity of a character in the film. Upon re-reading the review and these posts, it makes me a bit happy to see I'm not the only one who didn't connect there. It was as if the movie depended upon if you loved Zoey Deschanel or not. If you love her, you'll understand all of Tom's machinations, if not you're in the dark. If it was a choice to mute the story she tells Tom so that it stays a secret, fine - go with it - but at least give us other insights into her character, and insights as to why Tom loves her so much.

What surprised me is that the movie really flirts with greatness at parts - the aforementioned cameo and split-screen moments, as well as the musical number and a lot of the parallel moments and slow reveals in time really worked for me - but then dove right in to really pedestrian material. The cheap and easy joke with the "Happy Valentine's Day: Fuck you, whore." The tidy ending. One of the most painful for me was that overwrought speech he gives before quitting. It showed so much potential at parts and then just dropped it all for really bland moments.

The movie just feels really tailored to a generation, and even though I guess I'm part of the target age bracket, I missed something. Here's how much I missed it: My girlfriend and I broke up yesterday. I've been an emotional wreck. But the movie remained just a pleasant distraction and nothing more. If any movie should get to me emotionally right now, it would be this. But it didn't. Love, real love, that it professes to be "about" is very absent from the film. Away We Go has far more of it. Once does. Eternal Sunshine does. This does not. This feels as if a group was taken from their local Urban Outfitters and were asked to describe what they'd love to see in a movie. Then it was cobbled together into a screenplay and brought to life with a few very fun innovations.

If they had made that explicit, I would have burned down the theater.

This thread is a world-class bummer, because I enjoyed the hell out of this movie and walked out thinking "I don't know how anyone could not enjoy that."

It's a cute movie that rang true to me in a lot of ways. I connected with it on a very personal level, but beyond that, I thought it had some very clever bits.

And my take is you weren't supposed to connect with Summer. At all.

Maybe it's the week's deathnews, but this movie felt quite a bit like it was coming at me through a John Hughes filter. Smiths, dance sequence with marching band, looking at the camera, shallowangst - it was all in there.

Huh, I thought the movie made that pretty obvious actually. I thought that was one of the points his precocious sister was making when she told him that his memories of her are idealized.

I guess you could criticize the movie for being too subtle. But given how often these types of movies beat the audience over the head with their message, I’d rather a movie err on the side of subtlety.

I also think that it is not very clear and VERY unconnected, but when the moment came, I had the thought "Can he even hear what she's saying if he's analyzing it so much?" But that thought was thrown out quickly by the fact that it was the narrator speaking and the inconsistency of Tom's actions with that line of thinking.

Went and saw this last night. It was probably the most...fufilling and sweet movie I've seen in awhile. There were times where I was literally bent over laughing to death. Everything about this movie was great!!! I was surprised at how good Joseph Gordon-Levitt was for this part. Zooey Deschanel was amazing as well, cute as ever!

I acually heard a guy have to explain this joke to his date after the movie. No joke.

I cannot judge this movie objectively right now. I know there is a lot wrong with it but my personal life got int he way. That's all I have to say.

Not to be a dick, but I've had all kinds of girls fuck me over in relationships and this movie still doesn't do anything for me. It's like saying that because I was in a car crash once or saw an explosion, TRANSFORMERS 2 is more emotionally resonant. It doesn't work that way for me.

Yeah man, but I've had things very recently that made me relate. I'm just a really easy target right now.

Fair enough. The first time I saw LOST IN TRANSLATION was similar for me, but LOST IN TRANSLATION was a good movie at the time, and remains so. I just couldn't get into this at all.

For what it's worth, as of late I've been inundated with my friends telling me how fucking wrong I am about this movie, but I remain steadfast on this particular point.

Yeah, I feel like I'll be a little embarrassed by the effect the film had on me later one but right now the film just worked for me. I loved everything except a few things.

One of the complaints I keep hearing is that this movie is too mainstream for a indie movie, but I think it's aiming for the opposite: an indied-up mainstream movie.

Romantic comedies (which is what this film, When Harry Met Sally, and even Annie Hall all are) have their ghettos just like any other niche, filled with preconceptions and trappings and expectations. This film doesn't attempt to transcend its genre, just make it fresh, and when it errs, it errs on the side of self-awareness and intelligence. How many other romantic comedies can say that?

The film is obviously the story of one man's insight to a relationship, not the story of the relationship itself, and that's the critical acknowledgment that the film hangs on. That's the throughline: a relationship isn't a singular entity, it's a concept visualized from two different (and sometimes opposing) angles.

The film never aims for stark realism, as it's clearly an impressionist work, so to judge it in the frame of reality makes as much sense as doing the same to (better) works by Gondry or Charlie Kaufman. Would you malign ESOTSM because it only portray's Joel's vision of Clementine? No, because that's the whole point, and it's the same essential point being made here, which is why Summer's role here isn't as dynamic as some random Sandra Bullock laffer. It's not meant to be.

I hate to get too much up in arms about this film, because I don't think it was a totally fantastic work, but I hate to see people dislike this film because they misunderstood it. But I can't like it for them, so I guess it is what is will be.

Great film. Went to see it with my girlfriend and we both liked it a lot.

My one criticism would be the idea of Summer herself. I know this is Levitt's ideal world of Summer but Zooey isn't this drop dead gorgeous girl that the movie tried to make seem in some cases. She's a pretty girl, make no mistake. But this beauty that makes heads turn? Okay, I get it.. because this is Levitt's vision of things.. But where a guy at a bar would make a big deal about Levitt dating her? I didn't buy it.

I had that happen once with an ex. You get an asshole with the right amount of alcohol in him and it doesn't matter if your girl isn't movie-star pretty.

Not only does that happen all the time, but I also thought one thing the movie did a great job of was explaining the evidence that Summer was just a magnetic presence. Such presences aren't always pin-ups, but Zooey's adorable to boot.

It happens all the time, and they do set up her magnetic presence, but that scene was still as cliched as the rest of the movie. The douche might as well have been wearing sandals and had a Dave Matthews Band headband or something. And Levitt flat out hitting him without any consequences wreaks of bullshit screenwriting wish fulfillment rather than any kind of honesty. And it's just a crucible for one of the many fights the movie forces down our throats without giving us enough reason to understand Summer's side of things, which alienates us from her further.

The more I think about this movie, the more I dislike it.

Were you dozing? I don't think the movie's beyond criticism by a long shot, but that comment doesn't make sense to me.

Um, you're not supposed to? That's the point.

Given the above, I might suggest you stop thinking about it then.

That's the point? That we can't understand Summer? That she's too remote to us, the viewers, as well as him? That's a pretty shitty point that robs her of character, don't you think? The movie treats Summer as an object more then a character. And if that's the point, the point sucks.

This movie doesn't want me to think, other than about it's "super hip" soundtrack and ultra cool karaoke scenes and Joy Division/Clash t-shirts and band name dropping and ironic musical numbers and lame Holiday Card humor. It tries to win us over the easy way rather than the good way, takes too many short cuts and is as lazy as your response to my criticism of that cliched "douche" scene.

No, I just hate the way the whole scenario is handled. OK, so the douche and his buddies rough him up a little and (as I noted) the whole thing leads to a big Summer meltdown. Those are consequences, but the whole thing feels so forced and unrealistic. I totally buy that someone would hit on Summer at a bar when he's sitting right next to her. It's everything else I don't buy.

What frustrates me the most about this movie is that I think it had incredible potential, not only in its two leads but some of the ideas, including the structure and the "real/imagined" scene. But ultimately it feels bogged down by its own pretensions. I can't really explain it, but the whole movie felt like it was trying too hard while simultaneously not trying hard enough.

No, the movie treats her as a real person who is being objectified by someone drowning in infatuation. We're not meant to see more of her because we're seeing her through Tom's eyes, i.e., soft-focus.

Think about it. Is there ever a scene in the film that has Summer but without Tom? No. It's quite clear whose perspective we're seeing this from. The reason the audience can't engage with Summer is because, honestly, Summer isn't truly engaging with Tom.

It's exactly the same dynamic Gondry uses in ESOTSM and Woody Allen uses in Annie Hall. They are first-person recollections of relationships, not impartial documentaries of those relationships, and thusly they are subject to the biases and faults of that person's perspective.

And I can understand how one might think that the movie is overloaded with music and that the score serves as direction, but that argument is only fair if the plaintiff also feels the same way about films like The Graduate, About A Boy, and Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid. Personally, I feel the music choices are more tonal than instructional, and that there's really very few ways to illustrate emotion between people if you're not going to have them making long soliloquies to each other all the time (which real people don't do). There's nothing wrong with a movie being a product of its time; Annie Hall and The Graduate certainly both are, and yet they're still enjoyed today with no precondition.

Yeah, but both Annie Hall and ESOTM presented their love interests as more than flat, thinly-drawn characters. I think most of us here understand the choice, but the naysayers just didn't connect with it. It's not to say we "didn't understand it." It's understood, just not necessarily appreciated.

The use of music was never a big annoyance or distraction for me, but it never did feel as organic as it does in the films you mentioned. A lot of the music choices felt like they were chosen for a wink toward the target audience. The group of kids in front of me didn't stop nodding to each other and eating it up with every mention of The Smiths or Belle and Sebastian.