Why (500) Days of Summer is seriously overrated

OK, let me start out by saying that I really wanted to like this movie.

I hate romantic comedies. HATE them. My ex loved them and made me sit through some horrible horrible shit. By contrast, when I first saw a commercial for a romantic comedy with Janessa, and she said it looked awful and that she hated romantic comedies too, it was such a relief that I almost proposed on the spot.

So my initial reaction to this movie's commercials was, predictably, negative, even though it starred one of the hollywood stars I most want to make babies with. This fact alone wouldn't be close enough of a reason to see a flick anyway. Janessa joked that it would, but I pointed out that Zooey had been in the awful-looking "Yes Man" and I hadn't even joked about seeing it.

So why the change of heart? Well, I read lots of good reviews, heard good buzz, and regularly heard people insist that it was not a romantic comedy. So we figured, what the hell, maybe this will really be a decent film. And they were right - in part - it isn't a romantic comedy. It's about a relationship that doesn't work out. It also wasn't unwatchable by any means. The acting was good and the story was pretty interesting. Ironically, the fact that the movie had potential is what made its shortcomings so much more frustrating.

I'm not a movie reviewer, so I'm not going to spend time summarizing the plot. So...Spoiler Alert... you've been warned:

















1. The (500) thing is a pretty reasonable idea. The movie timeshifts around showing scenes at different points in the leads' relationship, mainly for purposes of contrast. It does this fairly well, and it wasn't hard to follow. So points there. But I still have NO idea why the 500 is in parenthesis. No clue. It was never explained and I'm left with the impression that it's just a pretentious touch. This idea is reinforced by how many more pretentious touches are in this film.

2. Despite the fact that the main character was obsessed with Zooey (and I am too, so I can understand, to some extent) - the film's characterization of Zooey was vapid and minimal. We got little to no insight as to why she felt the way she did about either the main character or about relationships in general. One bar scene where she says she doesn't like relationships and likes to "be free" does not a character make. Given that the main character repeatedly insists that she is the love of his life, this lack of characterization is appalling and seriously hurts the film.

3. The lead is extremely self-centered. I suspect the lead is based on the author of the screenplay, because I didn't get even a hint of irony about his focus. One of the most egregious examples involves his job as a writer of greeting cards. This is a weird job for him to have for several reasons, but I'll get back to that. Suffice it to say, the lead has his moment where he realizes that his job is lame and that he should be doing something better with his life. This is fine, in principle. I doubt anyone dreams of growing up and writing greeting cards. But this revelation is not the problem, it's how he deals with it.

Instead of just putting in his notice, he makes a dramatic show of how horrible the job is in front of all of his co-workers. At a meeting he goes off on a huge rave about how meaningless the job is and why anyone who does it, is, basically, an idiot. This is an incredibly immature, selfish move, whether he's right or not. It's disrespectful to everyone else who works at this place and completely without justification. Now, if the author had intended to make this point about his protagonist, it would have been one thing, but I think it's pretty clear from the scene that the author is basically speaking as the character - that he probably had such a job but never said these types of things to his co workers.

I think this is especially likely because the lead in this movie is, inexplicably, supposed to be an architect. This thought is given little to no explanation other than a few shots of the guy sketching pictures of skyscrapers - something I wasn't aware architects were particularly none for. Obviously, the main character is based on the writer, who was working for a greeting card company so that he could eventually write more substantive material. That part makes sense. Why a putative architect, on the other hand, would seek employment as a writer, is not only illogical, but entirely unexplained.

4. Despite not technically being a "romantic comedy," the movie is trite and cliche about its ideas regarding love in the extreme. We are shown the main pussy - er character - as a child, watching presentations of idealized love and, presumably, believing them. I understand that little girls may buy this crap, but little boys? And even little girls eventually realize, well most of them, that the true-love-destiny-prince-princess tripe is purely a disney fantasy, at least by the time they are thirty. Not only does this guy seem to think this stuff is real (he even engages in a fanciful full production dance number when he finally gets with Zooey... a cute sequence, but pretty gimmicky, to say the least) but the author seems to agree. Which brings us to #5.

5. If this film had presented the main character as a clueless douchebag who ultimately changes and learns that women are people, not idealized fantasy creatures, and that destiny is a childish (and I suppose Calvinist) conception, I would have been able to excuse much of the above. The message could have been, hey, life isn't that simple, this chick wasn't for you, move on and try to start a mature relationship. I could have lived with that. Instead, the end is the biggest cop-out in the movie by far. I am not exaggerating when I say it made me want to wretch.

In the final scene of the film, the lead is seen waiting to enter an office for a job interview, presumably as an architect. Waiting with him in the lobby is Minka Kelly, the insanely hot Lyla Garrity from Friday Night Lights. Guess what, she has an interview too. Oops, they are in competition! At the last moment before going into the interview, lead boy nuts up and decides to ask Minka out. The last line in the movie is that her name is... wait for it... Autumn.

Wow. Can it get any more heavy handed then that? Was winter waiting outside to give him a blowjob? Was spring the person interviewing him? Autumn is the next phase in his life, I get it, but there are sooo many problems with this lame ending. First, who the hell names their kid Autumn? NOBODY. I halfway thought her last name was going to be "Equinox." Summer is a girl's name and I thought its use was reasonably clever, but Autumn is just a heavy-handed way for the author to smack you in the face with an unnatural, undeserved "happy ending."

What's worse, the ending implies that the author was right all along. True love is out there, it just wasn't with Zooey, but the very next girl, absolutely. The moral of the story? I have absolutely no idea. Serial monogamy is good? I'm clueless.

In the end this movie was even more disappointing than the lead guy's not finding love with Zooey. Self-absorbed cliched nonsense - a romantic comedy, in other words - pretending to be something more. To me, that's much worse than your latest Kate Hudson-Matthew McChesty vehicle. At least there, I know what I'm getting. In the immortal words of the late Judge Judy, don't piss on my leg and tell me that it's sprinkling...