(500) Days of Summer (PG-13)
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This movie hit theaters in summer of 2009. I first watched it on DVD in summer of 2010. (I wanted to see it in summer because of the title, even though I was well aware that the title in no way refers to the season.) Next I should say, there is a bit of narration throughout the film, which is kind of fun, but there's not that much of it, really. Though at the outset, the narrator says that it's not a love story. I was originally planning on putting the review in the romantic movies section of my site, then started thinking about the quirky section, though I wasn't sure until the end... and at the end, I was less sure than ever. In a number of ways (2), it is a love story, regardless of what the narrator has to say about it. One: love stories don't all have to have happy endings. Two: This one sort of potentially does, though... it's not really certain. So, whatever. I could've just as easily put it in the romantic section, but it's still quirky enough for me to put it... here. As, obviously, I have done.

It's about this guy named Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who studied architecture, but is currently working for a greeting card company. There he meets a woman named Summer (Zooey Deschanel), who has just started a job as an assistant to Tom's boss. The narrator has already let us know that Tom believes in love, and Summer doesn't. Um... I should mention that before I ever saw the movie, I knew that it was told in a nonlinear fashion. Frequently, a number will appear on the screen to let us know on which day a scene falls, in relation to the first time Tom ever saw Summer (day 1 is not even the first time they actually met, just the first time, as I say, that he saw her). If I recall, the first time they actually met was like day 4. And... well, the story flashes around, back and forth. We obviously don't get to see all 500 days, though some days appear in more than one scene. (As the narrator says toward the end of the movie, most days don't have an impact on a person's life.) Anyway, the movie isn't quite exactly what I expected. I mean, I sort of expected it to jump around in time more than it did, but I suppose that wouldn't have worked, I mean... you can't really tell a story completely randomly. To a fair extent, the story is... somewhat linear. Even if we learn very early on that Tom and Summer break up, and he wants to get her back... for the most part, we get to see their relationship develop in something resembling a recognizable fashion. But yeah, there is some skipping around both before and after the breakup. But I'm certainly not going to tell you whether they get back together or not...

Anyway. Hmmm. I should say Tom has a couple of friends named McKenzie and Paul, neither of whom I saw as particularly helpful to him in regards to his relationship, either before it started, while it was going on, or after it ended. Though he also has a much younger sister named Rachel (Chloe Moretz). Rachel is quite precocious, and is of more help to Tom than his friends, though we see less of her than of them. In any event, before Tom and Summer even start dating, she says she doesn't believe in love. And after they do start dating, she tells him she's not looking for anything serious. Nevertheless, Tom can't help but fall very hard for her; he thinks she's "the one."

Well. I guess I don't really know what else to say about the plot. The movie's really funny and quirky and cute and sweet and sad and, you know... the whole gamut. It's hard to say quite how I feel about it all, except that I liked it. And it does tend to support my feelings about love in general, though to explain in what ways it does so would be too spoilery. But I will say, I predicted the final cosmic joke of the movie well before the end, though I didn't actually expect it to happen, so when it did, I laughed and laughed and laughed....