Miscellaneous

500 Days of Summer

By jeremyblachman

I saw a screening last night.  I'd read the script a few months ago and really enjoyed the script.  The script was more enjoyable than the movie, unfortunately.  Thought Joseph Gordon-Levitt did a great job, making a relatively bland character seem much more interesting and introspective than the words he was given to say.  Thought the gimmick ended up not really serving the film-- the movie would have been better, I think, if it was linear, and we didn't know five seconds into the film (basically) what was going to happen by the end.  The jumping back and forth in time made it hard to get to know the characters, and hard to feel like anyone was changing at all throughout the movie.  They don't change.  Nothing much happens.  There are some underwritten friend characters, and an underwritten boss, and a poorly-used narrator, and then there's just this guy and girl who exist in the movie, and he likes her although we're never sure why, and maybe she likes him too although we're never sure she does, and there's some scenes that play really real and some scenes that are trying way too hard to feel quirky or interesting for the sake of being quirky or interesting, and in the end I don't really know what the film is trying to say or if it's trying to say anything at all.  Love exists?  Love doesn't exist?  I don't know.  In the end it felt like a neat gimmick that led to a very ordinary movie.  And yet I really did enjoy the script when I read it, so I don't know what happened.

Full post as published by Jeremy Blachman's Brand New Weblog on July 16, 2009 (boomark / email).