(95 min, 2009)Director: Marc Webb
Writers: Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber
Stars: Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Geoffrey Arend
I want the one I can't have
"I want the one I can't have
And it's driving me mad
It's written all over my face"
And it's driving me mad
It's written all over my face"
- The Smiths, "I want the one I can't have"
Meet Summer. She's individualistic, independent. She never wants to get married and she doesn't believe in true, romantic love.
500 Days of Summer is a romantic comedy, told in nonlinear narrative structure, jumping between 1st and 500th day of Tom and Summer's relationship. There is one thing that will kill every movie, especially romantic comedy - lack of chemistry. Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel are a terrible match when it comes to personality and on screen presence. But it's not their fault - Zooey is like a separate entity - she is in the movie, but she is never a part of it. Sure, her character was supposed to be independent, but in the light of Summer's final choice, casting Deschanel was a big mistake. Zooey is a wonderful person but she is a terrible actress - I don't know if I can even call her that - her characters are exactly like her. Had I not made mistake of watching interviews with her I wouldn't know that. I never saw a single interview with her sister Emily (who plays doctor Temperance Brennan in well known show Bones) and I still regard Emily as a good actress. But Zooey is always the same, the only two times that I may, just may, admit she tried something new was in “Winter Passing” and “The Assassination of Jesse James..” but her performance there was very brief – I still hope we will get to see more of her in rumored Director Cut of that film, which is almost holding a legendary status, since only few saw it and no one knows if it's ever going to be released.
