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Typically at SpoutBlog, we rarely state the obvious when it comes to a mediocre movie, trying to instead direct our gaze toward a gem that deserves some advocacy. Unless, of course, there’s a danger that said movie is going to overshadow the much earned good buzz around a great film. Such is the case with 500 Days of Summer starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. It’s a movie I walked out of at Sundance 2009, not because it sucked, but because it was lukewarm. I figured I’d never write, “It was so-so” for a review, so I left. But in the past week it has, surprisingly, garnered ovations that threaten to eclipse so many excellent films coming out of that festival.
Case in point, it’s number one in Coming Soon’s Best of the Fest:
Clearly the biggest crowd-pleaser at this year’s festival was this romantic comedy from first-time director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael Webber, which covers a year and a half in the relationship between Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Bishl (Zooey Deschanel), the latter a flighty woman who breaks the former’s heart. While some of the ground covered is stuff we’ve seen before, the film is told in an innovative and clever narrative style, jumping around in time from the height of their developing love affair to the months that follow their break-up. Gordon-Levitt creates an infinitely likeable character that both guys and women can relate to, much like John Cusack in his heyday…. What could easily be seen as a “…Say Anything” for the younger generation, the film’s Sundance premiere received a standing ovation from the audience, and one can expect that when it opens in July, it will be another Searchlight hit in the vein of Garden State and Once.
Of course, I can’t write a “review” of a movie I didn’t fully watch. I can, however, write a review of my decision to walk out a half hour into it. In fact, I’ll use the above blurb to record what was going through my mind in the half hour before I left.
“Clearly the biggest crowd-pleaser at this year’s festival…” Must be taken with a grain of salt. A festival like Sundance combines star-spotting mania with meditative art films, wrist-slashing character studies and unsellable passion projects. So, seeing a couple stars (who happen to be seated in the audience) perform in a mildly funny comedy often brings the house down when, in a regular multiplex, the house would shrug and head to the bathroom when the credits roll.
“… from first-time director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael Webber, which covers a year and a half in the relationship between Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Bishl (Zooey Deschanel), the latter a flighty woman who breaks the former’s heart.” Deschanel’s greatness in other roles is that she can be flighty without being shallow. She has an introspective, girl next door quality that gives her romantic leads the feeling that she’s not the girl you get, she’s the girl you marry. It appears that Neustadter and Webber probably had Deschanel in mind for the part when they wrote it, but in their mind she’s Kate Hudson.
“… the film is told in an innovative and clever narrative style, jumping around in time from the height of their developing love affair to the months that follow their break-up.” Non-linear story-telling can make an already compelling story that much more compelling (Pulp Fiction, Memento). But if you take an old episode of Two Guys and A Girl and recut it with a non-linear plot, it’s still an ABC sitcom that’s easy to watch, but doesn’t compel you to laugh out loud.
“Gordon-Levitt creates an infinitely likeable character…” It’s not that he’s unlikable as much as tedious. If the male lead is a bore for at least a half hour of the movie, can you really say “infinitely likable?”
“…the film’s Sundance premiere received a standing ovation from the audience, and one can expect that when it opens in July, it will be another Searchlight hit in the vein of Garden State…” If there is one thing that Summer does have in common with Garden State, it’s that it tries to be a cinematic mix tape. But there was a certain chemistry between Zack Braff and Natalie Portman in that movie. However corny, the scene where Braff falls for Portman when she plays The Shins for him doesn’t have the screeching-brakes feeling to it that Levitt’s swoon does when Deschanel says, “Are you listening to The Smiths? I love The Smiths!”
In a lot of ways, 500 Days of Summer feels derivative of Garden State and a lot of other better romantic tweener comedies. It’s kind of like if Garden State had been turned into a TV series, recast, cancelled, then bought by USA network and restarted. Which is maybe why I felt watching half an hour was enough.
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We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Nice reference to Two Guys and a Girl. I’ve always had a weird Traylor Howard thing.
Wow. I really don’t agree with you. I think you misunderstood the whole movie - or the half hour you actually saw.
Like you said yourself, you really shouldn’t review a movie, when you’ve only watched about 25% of it.
“Summer Bishl”?
Is that supposed to be a “Summer Bishil” homage? And if so, huh?
I probably shouldn’t give you advice on being a movie critic, but in the future you should watch the entire film. it’s hard for me to take this review seriously when you haven’t seen all of it. I’ve seen some good movies that started slow, but ended great
I think I was forthright in saying this isn’t a movie review and I don’t think I could write one because I didn’t watch 500 DAYS all the way through.
It is a description of the reasons why I feel this movie should not have been the belle of the ball at Sundance 2009 because–regardless of whether or not I watched it all the way thru–there were several movies that from the first to the last minute were far superior.
Just watched “500″ twice in 5 hours from start to finish. As a security film courier for over 6 years having watched a couple hundred movies some up to ten times (Walk the Line) I can say I have walked out or even just tuned out several films only to revisit them and be utterly shocked at what I had missed for amazingly diverse reasons. It’s not “Gone With The Wind” but it is a satisfying literate romantic comedy well worth 2 hours of ones time, even yours Mr. Moore. G’wan, g’wan see it again. Guarantee you like it much more this go round.
Yours Truly—-BOB STELLA
I have to admit, I was yawning throughout the entire movie. I don’t know, it’s either because they were miscast or that there was absolutely no chemistry between the two. Tom was pathetic, and Summer, well Summer is just really mean. I’m disappointed because I really liked the trailer.
Even having watched only half an hour of it, your review is almost spot-on. There is almost nothing innovative or particularly interesting about this film or its characters. It was enjoyable, but not fantastic. It was fun, but not illuminating.
From an intellectual standpoint, there is one thing I appreciated about this movie, and that’s how how it rather explicitly asked the viewer to be honest with themselves when remembering the past, without glossing over the dark points, and that fate and destiny are just human inventions; all we really have are coincidence and opportunity that we must choose to exploit.
However, as that’s the only thing that really separates it from other similar films, this film is not all that special.
The story was well developed and the film was well acted. True there is no chemistry between the characters in the traditional sense because only one character in this story was in love. Tom was neither weak, nor boring - he was real. He had plenty of chemistry with Summer, it just wasn’t reciprocated.
The story was told from Tom’s point of view, it was Tom’s story, and thus we had to understand him a bit before the relationship unfolded. Giving us his story in a non-linear fashion made it all the more interesting. Sort of the way you explain your breakup to a friend. You forget things, go back, go forward, etc. An explosive beginning does not make a great movie - in fact it quite often makes CRAP movies. I can see how a lack of maturity or never having been in love would make the film inaccessible to some.
“regardless of whether or not I watched it all the way thru–there were several movies that from the first to the last minute were far superior.”
Its astonishing to me that you have the ability to compare this movie to the first and last minutes of others.
a little poem for you.
A certain Paul Moore …
etc.. etc.. etc..
I don’t get it. You say this isn’t a review, but you go ahead and talk about why you didn’t care to watch it through. I personally liked it and can bore you with the details of why, but that’s because I saw the whole thing.
Now, you did say “there were several movies that from the first to the last minute were far superior” — have you blogged about those? I didn’t get to go to Sundance, but I’m interested in hearing about those films.
I think that mr moore here was going trough a break up at the time to =P myb that’s why he walked out just to suposively not make a movie review wile u still did just in a diferent way
I have to say I don’t even know why we bother listening or reading rather an critic’s idea of the movie. You either like it or you didn’t. That’s all there is too it but to put down someone’s creative work when you didn’t even have the courtesy of giving it more than 30 mins of your time is just plain stupid, thats like people bitching about the president when they didn’t even vote! I personally enjoyed the movie very much. It was genuine, funny and honest and not just some cookie cutter hollywood piece of crap. I love Garden State and as a fan of that movie I have to say they did fall within the same lines. Zach Braff was glorified for Garden state when there have been tons of movies where a guy meets a quirky spontaneous girl who changes his outtake on life and they live happily ever after- oh yeah he was a real mastermind! If you know you can’t review the movie properly than why did you still try to tear it to shreds. It was creative and different and if you didn’t like it that much why did you even open your mouth? Instead you took someone else’s critique and just disagreed with answers that didn’t really have any substantial backing to them. Critics hailed the movie WATCHMEN recently and i sat through the entire excruciating 2 and some odd hours of it and can say that I didn’t like it and there was no point to the plot- but at least I watched the whole thing! Why don’t you write us a storyline that is better and wow us all-since you apparently are the creativity guru of Sundance.
p.s you started your article with the reason for writing this was to explain why you walked out and that you just had to say something because this movie was endangering a greater project from receiving the credit it deserved. Yeah what movie was that? Cause you got so involved with your dislike of 500 days that you never once mentioned that true gem of Sundance. So which one was it so we can all see what was so much better than the 30 measly minutes you watched?
It looks like you just wrote this just for the hell of it.
You didn’t even finish the movie. You say this review reasons why you walked out, yet we did not get that at all. You basically just commented on Coming Soon’s blurb who evidently saw the movie in it’s entirety prior to writing the review, rebutted it. Whereas you didn’t.
If you’re a true critique, you would know that you’d have to watch the movie entirely in order to write a true review. Why are you saying that it shouldn’t be the belle of the ball when you haven’t given the movie a chance?
“there were several movies that from the first to the last minute were far superior.” There goes your credibility out the window. Judging a film based on others who have different scopes, different stories? You don’t deserve to be called a critique.
Good to know that this insignificant reviewer, in his whopping 16 (now 17) comments, has basically been told what a ludicrous “review” this is.
What a joke. I’m astounded this irrelevant “review” popped up in a Google search result.
watch the movie. I too think you didn’t understand the movie, nor understand the beauty of their development throughout the movie, nor do I agree with your opinion on the zooey’s abilities.
I think you think too highly of yourself and the things you do or say. It seems too that you have inappropriately gauged the power your opinion ought to hold.
just because you think you’re a critic, doesn’t mean your not aloud to like movies with universal appeal.
you should also stop thinking you have a full opinion by any measure since you haven’t even seen the whole movie. and if you feel accomplished at taking fragments of other peoples arguments then using it to support your underdeveloped point: be a lawyer.
.. it’s summer finn, not bishl. the fact that you didn’t even pay enough attention to catch her last name, already shows you shouldn’t review it.
also, i’m going out of the box to call that you’re just one of those insignificant critics that think so highly of your opinions that you just want to go against what the crowd likes just so you can feel somewhat unique and superior after writing your review. which sucked, just so you know.
Who is Summer Bishl, and what does she have to do with this amazing movie?
thank god, someone with a brain.