(500) Days of Summer

MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running time: An hour and a half

Let me start off by clarifying the title of this movie. “(500) Days of Summer” does not, in fact, refer to skipping over Spring, Winter and Autumn for a little over a year. Actually, it refers to a woman named “Summer” (played by Zooey Deschanel, the girl from “Elf”) and the 500 days that she spends in the life of Tom (played by the guy in “10 Things I Hate About You” who wasn’t Heath Ledger). The film’s narrator describes the movie in the beginning as “a story of boy-meets-girl, but not a love story”. This is because, as the audience quickly learns, Tom gets dumped from his seemingly perfect relationship. This seems at first like it will be a surprising plot twist, until we learn that Tom was warned by Summer up front about the impossibility of a relationship. The rest of the movie is an examination of how all of this went down and how Tom comes out from it.

With the summary out of the way, I’d like to point out that this is probably the closest I’ll ever come to my dream film of 90 minutes closed in on Zooey Deschanel’s eyes. This movie makes it especially easy to slip into an infatuation for the gorgeous and quirky actress because we see the movie through the mind’s eye of Tom. As such, everything we see about Summer is perfect. Her timing, sense of humor and devious behavior all add up to create an entirely unblemished entity of a woman. Only a few times in the film does the audience get to see what Tom cannot, that Summer is a human being who must come to terms with her own issues as well.

Seeing a movie set in how a character views things, rather than how they literally are, is definitely a unique and interesting experience. Life may at one moment turn into a musical-esque dance to Hall and Oates’s “You Make My Dreams Come True” to an entire city turning into nothing more than a stenciled picture erasing itself with the main character’s hopes and ambitions. This culminates in a scene showing the drastically different expectations Tom has for a party where he will see Summer and the reality of the event shown side-by-side in real time onscreen.

(500) Days of Summer has a very real feel to it. This movie was made for the ‘Tom’s of the world; people who have had failed relationships or infatuations and survived to talk about them. It shows everything from the happy times to the weeks spent in bed with nothing but twinkies and liquor. The movie gives the audience something that they might not see in other movies however, and that is the fact that a person can better themselves from a bad experience if they choose to do so. It shows that hardship may not always lead to the desired ending, but can be just as worthwhile in a world of surprises. That, in my opinion, makes this one of the most relevant movies that you can possibly see. Definitely take advantage of that.

Much Love,

Autolycus


Actual Rating: The MPAA got it right this time with a PG-13 rating. There are words and some implied sexuality, neither of which is going to break the stride of anybody who’s ever walked through a high school hallway.