Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has failed in his attempts to become an architect and instead works for a greeting card company, writing those awful inside bits of romantic propaganda. He is looking back, not so fondly, over the 500 days that he knew a girl called Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel), the ‘summer’ of the title.
Each scene is introduced by a caption saying which of the 500 days it relates to but this is not done in order. In fact we start at the end and then flit back and forth. Which means the plot is dispensed with immediately by telling you how it all ends.
From the moment Summer walked into his office as the new admin girl, he apparently knew she was ‘the one’ he was going to spend the rest of his life with. This immediately makes him very different from most men. A unique sort of guy, one who craves commitment. Girls do the ‘love at first sight’ sort of thing, boys don’t. Girls fall instantly in love; boys fall instantly in lust and then kind of get their head around the ‘love’ thing later. This, I think, is the whole point of the film, which promised a reversal of the normal male-female roles but I just don’t think it worked.
Tom plays it cool and she makes all the running, being chatty in the lift when she finds out he is a Smiths fan. Then at a company karaoke evening, a colleague lets slip Tom's feelings for her but he misses this golden opportunity and it is left to Summer again to make the running, as she snogs him at the photocopier the next day.
Summer makes it clear that she isn't looking for anything serious, doesn't want a relationship and just wants to be friends. If a guy was doing this, he wouldn’t admit it, it would harm his chances. Then she pursues him anyway. They go out and when he takes her back to his place, he has to extract himself from their clinch on the bed to go to the bathroom, seemingly needing time to think through this ‘just friends, we’re not having a relationship’ thing, not understanding at all why ‘his friend’ is seducing him on his bed. Is that how a girl would react? Maybe, but you just want to shout at him to stop over analysing and just go with the flow. When he returns she is naked. Of course this is most guys’ fantasy, an attractive female friend with ‘benefits’.
Summer is the sort of girl who will watch a porn movie with her man, say 'that looks achievable' before trying it out in the shower. Most men would kill for a girl like that. The film is ninety minutes of Summer jumping into bed with him, all the while being totally upfront about not wanting a relationship. So just what was his problem? Whether he believes her or not, get out or enjoy the ride. Every boy knows a girl like Summer, who they want but can't have. Yet he got the gig, most of us don’t.
He skips out of the apartment the next morning, cue cheesy dance number to a bit of ‘Hall and Oates’. ‘Hall and Oates’ apart, the soundtrack is probably one of the best things about the film, featuring songs from the Pixies, the Doves, Black Lips, Regina Spektor, Temper Trap and of course the Smiths.
They develop a typical office relationship, spend a lot of time together, have a lot of fun and seemingly grow closer and closer. Which if it’s supposed to be a film about the reversal of the bad boy-good girl roles is wrong. She’s just not malicious at all. She needs to treat him like dirt, not call him, use him like an unscrupulous guy would and perhaps even try to get off with his friends. It’s not brash or bold enough in that way. In fact the film gives us the impression that Summer very obviously does like Tom and the attraction between them comes over as very real. They become more than just friends. She doesn't want to label things but he thinks that they're in a relationship because, well they are. It's a film about an argument about terminology and it becomes just another boy meets girl story. If this was supposed to turns the genre on its head, then once it had done so, it toppled back over and fell on its back.
Later after she dumps him following a realisation that comes after she interpreted the ending of the ‘The Graduate’ as sad and he didn’t, they meet up again at a colleagues wedding and she catches the bouquet, signifying that she is next. Yet when she invites him to a party at her place, Tom finds out that it is not to be with him. The girl who didn't want to be anyone's girlfriend is now engaged to someone else.
The film had potential and a clever idea but never got there, at least not for me. Part of it was role-reversal and part of it wasn’t, which just left me confused and frustrated with both of them. It offered a few good lines and a few clever scenes but not enough and far too many clichés. I daren’t mentioned the precocious younger sister or his seemingly pointless friends which helped to drag it down.
We don’t even get an unhappy ending. The film ends with Tom at a job interview as he returns to architecture. His rival for the job, a girl, claims to recognise him from a local bar. They agree to meet for a coffee afterwards. Her name is Autumn. Oh dear. So now it’s Day 1 of Autumn. This will be an interesting start to a new relationship knowing one of them beat the other to the job. I wonder if they had to subtitle that for the American audience to explain what Autumn was.
Moving swiftly on.
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