500 DAYS OF SUMMER (2009) **1/2 It would be easy enough, several decades into being happily married, to watch this film and think that it doesn't offer much. Maybe some distant echo of a relationship that you've long since been grateful didn't work out, doesn't seem like so much. But as a younger, less experienced individual...this is a tremendous insight into the dazzling menu of emotions that life offers up during that time. People go into relationships for different reasons, some people like definition and some do not, need; if the intended destination remains undefined for only one there's going to be some trouble along the line even if it all ultimately leads to growth and unanimity. The jumping around narrative effect makes you focus on the diversity of emotion at the expense of the plot line, which works, and Marc Webb has the skills to lend it all some flash in just the right spots down the stretch. It's funny, the cultural references are geared more towards people of my generation, maybe it's the writers still working something out after all these years, maybe older people are included in the possibility of resolution as well as the need for it. Of course it wouldn't work at all if Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel weren't persuasive and sympathetic, and Zooey is so appropriate that she's going to have to fight off-or give into-the collective desire for her to play this character again and again.
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