A narrator at the beginning of (500) Days of Summer tells us that while what follows will be a story of boy-meets-girl, it's definitely not a love story. Indeed, if the words "love story" make you expect a happily-ever-after ending, that's correct. But it's very much a story about love, and the ways in which we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that a hopeless relationship is a grand, this-is-forever romance. It's about those times when the object of our affections isn't even in the same book that we are, much less on the same page, yet we stubbornly refuse to see it.
Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has always believed in the magic of love (partly due, we're told, to a complete misreading of the ending of The Graduate). He has a degree in architecture, but has never pursued his passions, instead working as a writer for a greeting-card company. When he meets Summer (Zooey Deschanel), the sort of girl who's always had men falling at her feet and who doesn't believe in true love, he falls hard. And even though she tells him flat-out that she doesn't want to be anyone's girlfriend, Tom thinks that Summer is quite possibly The One.
We, the audience, know differently, however. (500) Days of Summer is told in a non-linear fashion, jumping forward and back in time ("Day 104" is followed by "Day 5," for example), so we have a good idea of where this doomed relationship is headed. But the journey, in this case, is the destination, because (500) Days is such a funny, quirky, charming, and surprisingly authentic look at the joys and foibles of modern love, with two eminently watchable stars at its center.
Gordon-Levitt, who came to attention as a kid actor in TV's "3rd Rock from the Sun" and the superb teen movie 10 Things I Hate About You, is given a marvelous showcase here for his talents, often framed with clever cinematic devices -- his giddy, infatuated joy turns into a dance number to Hall & Oates' “You Make My Dreams Come True," while his abject misery is expressed through a Bergmanesque, black-and-white foreign film. One outstanding segment uses split-screen to show how Tom's expectations of one of his encounters with Summer are drastically different from the reality. A lesser actor might be overshadowed by director Marc Webb's cinematic gimmicks, but Gordon-Levitt is so very good, and so very likable, that they simply serve to enhance his subtly impressive performance.
Tom gets romantic advice from his two best pals, both of whom are, for different reasons, the absolute wrong people to whom he should be listening. McKenzie, played by Geoffrey Arend, is the prototypical single schlubby guy, while Paul ("Criminal Minds'" Matthew Gray Gubler) has been with the same girl since high school. The one wrong note in the film is Tom's wise-beyond-her-years little sister (Chloe Moretz), a cliched character in a film full of otherwise authentic types.
Rated PG-13 for some language and an adult (but not dirty) approach to sex, (500) Days of Summer is a refreshingly non-chick-flickish romantic comedy, with a brain as big as its heart.