500 Days of Summer a refreshing rom-com

This is a story about boy meets girl, but it is not a love story. This is what the narrator from the new romantic comedy, (500) Days of Summer, directed by Marc Webb and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, tells us at the start of the movie. The film centers around Tom Hansen (Gordon-Levitt) and his encounter and relationship with Summer Finn (Deschanel).

Tom and Summer are both employees working at a greeting card company that have very different opinions on love. Tom believes everyone has a true love out there somewhere, while Summer simply believes that loves doesn’t exist. The movies spans over the course of their 500 days together, jumping back and forth between different time periods, of a relationship that is both at once gloriously beautiful and dreadfully heartbreaking.

The movie elevates the genre of romantic comedy to something audiences haven’t seen before. While most modern romantic comedies involve fantasy scenarios or raunchy humor, (500) Days of Summer supplies many moments of witty humor in a setting that’s lock, stock and barrel real.

Webb, who Trashwire readers might remember from directing classic My Chemical Romance videos like “Helena” and “I’m Not OK (I Promise)”, showcases magnificent skill as he incorporates a song and dance number, split screen, slow-motion, and an incredible foreign, artistic, black-and-white moment, all into one film. These are just a few of the elements Webb uses, in his directorial debut, which is something entirely new to fans of romantic comedies. Webb’s impressive directing (he uses a blue-centric color scheme to bring out Deshcanel’s eyes, which are wonderful) and the pitch-perfect soundtrack, which includes work by The Smiths, The Temper Trap, and Simon & Garfunkel to name a few, work together to paint a beautiful portrait of the highs and lows of the wonderful and painful emotion that is love.

Deschanel and Gordon-Levitt have enormously incredible chemistry on screen together. Gordon-Levitt is absolutely perfect as the young man searching for his true love in a world where that’s not the easiest thing to find. Deschanel is equally brilliant, like she always is, as the young girl looking for a casual, no pressure romance.

(500) Days of Summer is hands-down one of the year’s finest and quite possibly the best comedy in this vein since Garden State. You’ll be hard pressed to find a film this year that is nearly as funny or touching as what the team of Webb, Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel portray in this flawlessly, charming comedy that audiences will want to watch over and over again