'(500) Days of Summer' review

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel (Credit: Chuck Zlotnick/Fox Searchlight)

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Before you even see them meet, you know they'll break up. That's the fate of bright young greeting card writer Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who believes in the power of love, and his new co-worker/dreamgirl Summer (Zooey Deschanel), who doesn’t. The story of their rocky relationship unfolds non-chronologically and exclusively from Tom's perspective. As the film warns from the start, "This is not a love story. It's a story about love."

The buzz: A crowd pleaser at this year’s Sundance film festival, “(500) Days of Summer” comes from Fox Searchlight, the studio that released “Juno,” “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Slumdog Millionaire” and hopes to have found another word-of-mouth indie sensation. The movie marks the feature directing debut of Marc Webb, previously known for music videos from the likes of Weezer and My Chemical Romance. Also notable is the change of pace for leading man Gordon-Levitt, who started out on TV’s “3rd Rock From the Sun” but earned serious indie credibility with knockout turns in “The Lookout,” “Brick” and the remarkable “Mysterious Skin.” That’s important because…

The verdict: Gordon-Levitt’s performance is reason enough to recommend this movie. In what’s sure to become a cornerstone of a wildly promising career, his thoroughly winning star turn showcases an immense emotional range and perfectly captures every inch of Tom’s journey—from a joyous morning-after dance routine to the pitiful post-breakup period when getting dressed to leave the house is too much to bear. Deschanel’s role is less demanding: she just needs to be fetching enough to make us believe Tom when he claims “She’s the only person in the entire universe that will make me happy.” She succeeds, but we don’t really get to know Summer, just what Tom thinks of Summer. That’s the film’s point, and its savvy exploration of the “true love” concept helps overcome stray moments of forced whimsy. (Webb has the dangerously cutesy hipster aesthetic down pat, from music to fashion, but the only element that truly grates is Tom’s unnecessary love guru of a kid sister.) “Days” owes a considerable debt to one of the decade’s great relationship movies, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” but it’s a testament to all involved that the film is never less than uniquely pleasurable on its own.

Did you know? While some of the movie's song selections were written into the script—including Hall & Oates' "You Make My Dreams Come True"—others were introduced by music supervisor Andrea Von Foerster, who has worked on numerous TV shows including "The OC," "Grey's Anatomy" and "Dollhouse."

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