500 Days of Summer Reviews
It's very smooth and well done; Marc Webb clearly has a solid visual eye and natural sense of pacing.
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| Original Score: A
If it just misses being this generation's 'Annie Hall', it's still deliciously refreshing, sweet and fizzy. A sherbet dip of a movie.
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| Original Score: 4/5
This is a romantic comedy that makes the concept of romantic comedies appealing again -- that reminds you how resonant and transporting they can be when they're done right.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
It isn't Hugh and Andie or Meg and whomever, but (500) Days offers hope that Hollywood can pass that romance baton to somebody other than the crude crew of the Kappa Alpha Apatow frat house.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Top CriticThe film's postmodern path takes us through touching, tender, hilarious territory before winding up at the most beguiling part of any love story. The beginning.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
[A] visually witty, flawlessly played romantic comedy.
This movie has flighty warmth. It makes delirious use of one of Hall & Oates' boppiest tunes. It has a bluebird of happiness, for crying out loud.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Captures with such immediacy the elation and anxiety of new love, the tingle and the terror, the profound sense that you have never been more alive and the occasional wish that you could die on the spot.
Falling in love or falling out? This film offers a helpful tonic for either condition.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
The swooningly romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer is a movie that will be discovered, embraced and shared with friends like a favorite record album.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
What saves 500 Days from terminal shallowness are Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel, who are not the usual picture-perfect androids peopling these young-love idylls.
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| Original Score: B-
(500) Days of Summer is something seldom seen: an original romantic comedy.
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| Original Score: 4/5
It's the oldest bittersweet story in the book, of course, but music-video director Marc Webb approaches his feature debut with great confidence, flair and a minimum of schmaltz.
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| Original Score: 3/4
I guess maybe I'm not Tom but Summer. I like your looks, and heaven knows I appreciate the energy you put into wooing me, but I don't want us to be a couple.
The film gets by on a few funny lines...some playful split-screen imagery from first-time feature film director Marc Webb...and the real star of the picture, second-billed: Zooey Deschanel.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The movie suffers at times from a surfeit of adorableness in its two leads, as well as clumsy voiceover narration and a general sense that the subsidiary characters have about as much edge as plush toys.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Everything that's wrong, on the surface, with (500) Days of Summer pales in light of everything that's going on beneath its surface.
An irresistible feel-good movie about love gone bad. And that really isn't bad at all.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
This sweetly engaging trifle goes down as easy as cold lemonade on a hot afternoon.
| Original Score: 4/5
Much like Annie Hall did for a previous generation, (500) Days of Summer may be the movie that best captures a contemporary romantic sensibility.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
It's a tale you've heard a million times before. But it's told in such a relatable, inventive way in 500 Days of Summer, it almost feels like the first time.
Finally, a romance that understands we mark our lives by our scrapes with love, and our defeats, rather than simply white-wedding-cake success.
For all its ambitiousness, (500) Days of Summer feels synthetic and derivative, a movie that's popping with perceptions while searching for a style.
A fresh July breeze among recent (and mostly stale) romantic-comedy offerings.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
If only some sharp-eyed script editor had run 500 Days through the de-sappifying machine, it could have been the first great romantic comedy of 2009.
The ending is tidy and way too cute, but (500) Days is otherwise a different kind of love story: an honest one that takes a piece out of you.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Even if (500) Days of Summer isn't truly great, it is great fun, from its fresh view of Los Angeles to its use of music to its charming leads.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
The movie charmed me enough to send me out smiling, and I can see younger filmgoers taking it very much to heart.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The writing is often clever and the overall production playful and intelligent.
Boy gets girl and boy loses girl in convoluted, sometimes cloying but ultimately winning fashion in 500 Days of Summer.
In romance, we believe what we want to believe. That's the reason 500 Days of Summer is so appealing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
[Director] Webb treats his characters and his audience with respect. The result is something worth savoring regardless of the season in which it is seen.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
It's a Gen-Y Annie Hall made by a new-style Wes Anderson who uses his cleverness for humanity instead of postmodern superiority.
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| Original Score: A
Scratch any cynic and you'll find a romantic; scratch this movie's surface and you'll discover a typically tepid ode to pitter-pattering hearts dressed up in thrift-store chic and faux-edginess.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
What is unexpected is the sincerity beneath the modest conceit that, yup, love hurts.
Thanks to two wonderful, offbeat performances by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, this movie has charm to spare. It looks you right in the eye and tells the truth.
There's no real drama when the inner life of the female lead is so shrouded, even if that's the point.
I can't speak highly enough about this really inventive romantic comedy.
An engagingly breezy tale about a guy with a broken heart and the girl who broke it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
