Continuing my recent streak of watching only good movies, I saw the engaging near-romantic-comedy 500 Days of Summer today. It was funny, it had a heart, and it was smart - but in the end it questioned the very point I was so certain it was trying to make.
Basically, a boy with a wildly romantic concept of true love meets a girl named Summer (the girl from Elf!) with a cynical but supposedly realistic disbelief in the vague term "love." The boy falls hopelessly in love with Summer, but Summer doesn't return his affection. Sure, she enjoys their time together, but she always looks at their relationship as meaningless fun. Inevitably, it doesn't work out, and the boy is crushed.
The most important scene comes at the end of the film, after the boy has realized he has to move on, whether he wants to or not. While waiting for a job interview, he meets another girl. After talking to her, he shrugs her off as mere coincidence. After all, he already tried putting his hopes and dreams in Summer. She was supposed to be his one; she was his soul mate. The narrator describes his feelings succinctly: If he had learned anything, it was not to ascribe great cosmic significance to a simple earthly event. Coincidence. Nothing more than coincidence.
But then he stops. And he goes back. And asks her to coffee. And then "Oh, I didn't catch your name!" And she, "I'm Autumn."
Sure, it was a cheesy moment, and I do apologize for spoiling it, but it gave the movie a new significance. The seasons were changing. It wasn't about Summer or Autumn or the boy. The ending allows for either interpretation of love being correct. I was so sure it was going to agree with Summer's initial sentiment, mainly because the whole thing felt so much like the anti-love movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. At the end of it all, however, it lands somewhere between Eternal Sunshine and Enchanted. Summer found her love, just not in the boy. She says to the boy late in the movie, "You were right all along, just not about me."
The acting was superb, and the jokes were hilarious. (Definitely the best "Roses are red, violets are blue" punchline I've ever heard!) Sadly, I can not for the life of me remember that boy's name...Tom, right? That sounds right.
Four stars.
