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Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Clark Gregg, Minka Kelly, Matthew Gray Gubler ... see more see more... , Rachel Boston , Geoffrey Arend , Chloe Moretz , Jenn Gotzon , Jennifer Hetrick , Chris Connell , Patricia Belcher , Olivia Howard Bagg , Yvette Nicole Brown

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel star in director Marc Webb's wry, nonlinear romantic comedy about a man who falls head over heels for a woman who doesn't believe in love. Tom (Gordon-Levitt) ... read more read more...is an aspiring architect who currently earns his living as a greeting card writer. Upon encountering his boss' beautiful new secretary, Summer (Deschanel), Tom discovers that the pair have plenty in common despite the fact that she's seemingly out of his league; for starters, they both love the Smiths, and they're both fans of surrealist artist Magritte. Before long Tom is smitten. All he can think about is Summer. Tom believes deeply in the concept of soul mates, and he's finally found his. Unfortunately for Tom, Summer sees true love as the stuff of fairy tales, and isn't looking for romance. Undaunted and undeterred by his breezy lover's casual stance on relationships, Tom summons all of his might and courage to pursue Summer and convince her that their love is real. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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87% liked it

207 critics

PG-13, 1 hr. 35 min.

Directed by: Marc Webb

Release Date: July 17, 2009

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DVD Release Date: December 22, 2009

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(500) Days of Summer (500) Days of Summer (500) Days of Summer Cast (500) Days of Summer (500) Days of Summer (500) Days of Summer Summer Finn Joseph Gordon Lewitt and Zooey Deschanel Summer Finn Summer Finn Summer Finn (500) Days of Summer Summer Finn Zooey Deschanel (500) Days of Summer Zooey Deschanel Summer Finn
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Flixster Reviews (19,717)

  • jmanard52
    July 10, 2010
    jmanard52
    Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zoey Deschanel do a wonderful job in this off beat completely different romantic comedy. One thats strikes more to the reality of the complicated way love works than many others in the genre.
  • fb1710827246
    May 1, 2012
    fb1710827246
    Smart, funny and brilliant, it definitely left a taste in my mouth. If what to do with it's really tempting, brave, thoughtful ending and possible ramifications with my own, I do not know for now, but indeed it is one film I will probably remember somewhere again throughout the ... read morecourse of my life, and remember how endearing this movie was, and will most likely want to watch this movie all over again.
  • spielberg00
    April 1, 2012
    spielberg00
    We know, I assume, before the film even begins that Summer remains a part of Tom's life for an incredibly precise 500 days. (I would have lost count before a week had passed, truthfully.) The most uneven part of the film is how it jumps around. The sequence of events is very nonl... read moreinear. Don't be surprised if you see it skipping from day 290, to day 5, to day 6, to day 7, to day 8, to day 343, to day 11, etc. It is bound to confuse a viewer, and it makes the story seem even more unrealistic than it already is. The plot curve would be hard to draw out if I were neurotic enough to analyze it that far; not quite what you would expect for a movie that begins with a narration that promises it won't be a love story. The nonlinear sequencing was a good idea, but a failed attempt to make a clichà (C)d story seem new.

    (500) DAYS was quite an entertaining film, on the other hand. The performance of Zooey Deschanel provides enough chutzpah and energy to hold up an entire film on its own. Tom, as well, is an interesting character to watch. His performance gets a rise out of an audience with the most minute effort. In one scene, there is an off camera person interviewing Tom and his three friends about what love means to each of them. Both of Tom's two friends say similar, odd things; when we see Tom himself, he struggles to respond. In another scene, Tom is invited to Summer's rooftop party. We are provided a split-screen view; one side is devoted to Tom's expectations of the party's outcome, while the other side is for the actual outcome.

    http://themoviefreakblog.WordPress.com/review-500-days-of-summer
  • SirPant
    March 29, 2012
    SirPant
    Joseph Gordon-Levitt is on fine form here in this sweet romantic film. More 'indie cool' than rom-com, it breaks away from the usual formulaic Hollywood bile and 'moves about' a bit. The narrative works well with the story, which is written, told and directed very well. My only g... read moreripe with it, and this is more a matter of personal taste, is that Zooey Deschanel is pretty far from my idea of an 'object of desire'. My only desire is to banish her from film and TV, and that is me being refrained and nice. I can't stand her. The rest of it is tip top!
  • fb223580
    December 30, 2011
    fb223580
    "Narrator: 'You should know upfront, this is not a love story.' And that's when I knew I needed backup," my sister said to me as she pulled me into our theatrette to watch 500 Days of Summer with her. It's a mature reminder of how fragile, one-sided, temperamental and all-consu... read moreming love can be, and also just a really funny and bittersweet film. Would be great for getting over a breakup.

    --- SPOILER ---
    It is a movie with sort of a plot twist, in the form of a shift in perspective. From Tom's POV, he is madly in love with Summer and sees every event that happens in their courtship (from liking the same indie band to her sharing her secrets with him) as a sign. Destiny. How they were meant to be together. Those happy memories are coloured golden by his romantic lens on their time together. But as soon as the illusion is shattered, the audience realizes, looking back, that Summer never shared his feelings of this being a grandiose, earth-shaking love. She never made any sort of commitment to him. It's heartbreaking but the movie forces you to not look away as he crumbles.

    I love that the film ends on a note of reborn hope, that Tom will someday shed all his fantasies about this first, unforgettable love and finally move on to someone who will reciprocate everything he has to offer.
  • paulkoh110
    December 29, 2011
    paulkoh110
    This film describes my life and the lives of ALL hopeless romantics. The reality of the film is inescapable and also heartbreaking. I love it because it not only brings tears to my eyes every time I'm reminded of my own past "Summer Finns'" but also because there are lots of fish... read more in the sea and life goes on. (500) Days Of Summer is not a comedy or a drama, its life in an hour and a half.
  • fb733768972
    December 6, 2011
    fb733768972
    I thought this film was going to be a good movie, but this was (in one word) a masterpiece! Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel have some of the best on-screen chemistry I have ever seen. When Tom meets summer his life begins to changes as he falls in love with her, but the ... read morestory is only telling us that 500 days will be the end of the relationship. With heartfelt, funny, and charming moments, every scene in this film is memorable, especially the random dance number that I will never forget. "500 Days of Summer" proves that romantic fairytales are not only in the movies, and that this genre still has some gas to keep it going. This is a brilliant film that I can recommend to everyone!
  • mumby1988
    December 1, 2011
    mumby1988
    As a film enthusiast you're always on the lookout for innovation in films - not specifically for films which move the goalposts and redefine our notions of cinema, but for those which take something well-worn and familiar and challenge it for a new audience. With this in mind, th... read moreere is nothing that can get one's gander up more than a film which claims or thinks that it is being inventive, when in fact the merest glance beneath its surface shows that it is nothing of the sort.

    (500) Days of Summer comes at you with claims of being a genuine postmodern love story, an Annie Hall for the Twitter generation, or a rom-com for people who genuinely hate rom-coms. While it may not have the putridly glossy veneer of Sex and the City, the film ultimately shoots itself in the foot by being too kooky for its own good, and too structurally self-conscious to feel genuine. While there are still ideas and moments which sparkle, for the most part it feels disappointingly hollow.

    There's no denying that the makers of (500) Days of Summer had their hearts in the right place when setting out. In an age where cinema is increasingly and ever more cynically geared to the interests of teenage boys, romantic comedies or dramas with believable female protagonists are harder and harder to come by. The majority of contemporary romantic comedies are either predictable rehashes of stuff from the 1980s and 1990s, or vacuous vessels for product placement, offering women supposed material satisfaction in place of some more permanent form of happiness or self-esteem.

    Marc Webb's film is at its strongest when it attempts to puncture that self-contained, pre-packaged form of contentment. Joseph Gordon-Levitt writes greetings cards for a living, and struggles to remain optimistic or positive about the prospect of love in generalr. In one of the film's best scenes, he stands up in the middle of a meeting and lets rip about how hollow and meaningless love and happiness have become. Our culture has become so orientated around 'events', seeing emotion as something to be conveyed through commerce, that we are losing our ability to genuinely feel affection or understand each other.

    Somewhere within (500) Days of Summer, there is an edgier, more adventurous film which wants to use this premise to completely deconstruct the modern notion of love and romance. There is the potential within this material for something as scabrous and poisonous as Heathers, a ferociously funny film which ripped into the John Hughes view of high school by making you both squirm and howl with laughter. But try as he might, Webb can't seem to bring this desire to the surface for more than a few moments at a time. For all its claims of being left-field, indie-spirited and unconventional, (500) Days of Summer is structurally all too similar to the films whose clichés it claims to subvert.

    The single biggest problem with the film is that its structure of shuffled timeframes doesn't work. The film occupies the same kind of ground as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, trying to depict or capture the seemingly random way in which memory works within the context of a failed romantic relationship. But where Michel Gondry used the shuffled structure with great intelligence, confounding our expectations and getting us to question our own memories, Marc Webb treats it as a gimmick, as little more than a device to distract from the conventional elements of the story.

    This lack of confidence in the use of non-linear narrative is shown by the presence of a narrator. Having a narrator in any kind of story gives a feeling of certainty to the direction and outcome of the plot. This is even true of film noir, where an unreliable narrator makes us certain that we should not trust anyone. When you have a film which sells itself on being free-spirited and unpredictable, you don't want any creative element which would suggest otherwise. The narration here is as pointless as the narration in The Big Lebowski; it cheapens the experience by introducing choreography into an atmosphere of spontaneity.

    In terms of the central relationship, there isn't a great deal about either Tom or Summer which hasn't been covered in some depth before. Dynamically they're very similar to the main characters in Annie Hall: Joseph Gordon-Levitt may not be as neurotic or self-hating as Woody Allen, but Zoeey Deschanel is frequently as off-the-wall (and as annoying) as Diane Keaton. The idea of the relationship being important despite the fact that boy and girl do not end up together has been handled more conclusively in several other films. I don't recall either Annie Hall or Gregory's Girl having such a clunker of a final scene.

    The familiar elements of (500) Days of Summer keep coming to the fore as the film moves forward (and backward). The conversations surrounding musical taste are essentially the same as the arguments in Stephen Frears' High Fidelity, but with an indie gloss on top (in other words, substitute any other band for 'The Smiths' and you're home free). Summer may claim that romance is dead like it's a novel concept, but she is essentially playing the Billy Crystal role in When Harry Met Sally..., being the sceptical side of a relationship which treads on the edge of friendship. There's nothing wrong with making a love story with familiar scenes and plot points, but it helps if the film is happy with admitting this, rather than constantly avoiding the issue so that it can continue claiming to be original.

    One of the problems with the indie genre is that it attempts to compensate for the ordinary, often dull nature of its stories with unbridled levels of kookiness. While (500) Days of Summer isn't exactly off the radar, it contains any number of moments which will send the less tolerant among us running for cover. Some of the sillier romantic scenes are funny, like Summer's quip about her high school nickname, or the couple frolicking around in Ikea and remarking that "there's a Japanese family in our bathroom". But Deschanel's impromptu singing and the drunken karaoke scenes which follow are a clear sign of the plot running out of steam. And that's not to mention the completely misjudged musical number, which is closer to High School Musical than Singing in the Rain.

    The final, and most surprising, problem is the film's lack of interest in the motivations of its female character. While Tom gets his fair share of backstory about failed relationships, and those of his male workmates for comparison, we get no real indication of what has made Summer who she is, and why she behaves towards men in the way she does. One could argue that this is symptomatic of the genre as a whole, with the film becoming less of a rom-com than a bromance that happens to have girls in. But that does not excuse the lack of intrigue surrounding Summer, for which Zooey Deschanel must take some of the blame. Regardless of how underwritten she is, you cannot make us care about someone by staring doe-eyed into middle distance for two hours.

    The other performances in the film are a little more promising. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has proved his action chops in Brick and Inception, and he does the best he can with a role which requires him to be constantly either in a mood or blank-faced wonder. A pre-Kick-Ass Chloe Moretz is thoroughly impressive as Tom's worldly-wise younger sister, with both actor and character having wisdom beyond their years without looking like they are trying to play younger than themselves. And Clark Gregg is convincing as Tom's boss, coming across as creepy and unsettling without going over-the-top.

    (500) Days of Summer is a disappointing and deeply overrated addition to the rom-com genre. When stripped of all its hype and kookiness, it is essentially Annie Hall with shuffled timeframes, half the brains and less than half the conviction. Had Marc Webb the guts to risk being unpopular, and deconstruct the notion of modern love head on, it might have been more memorable, distinctive and enjoyable. One hopes that he will do a better job when dealing with Peter Parker.
  • adammahler1
    November 6, 2011
    adammahler1
    500 Days of Yupster.

    It's a VERY smooth and good-looking elaboration of "nice-guy" narcissism. The movie valorizes wounded sensitivity and the type of person who thinks s/he deserves to be liked because of WHAT s/he likes. The fanbase will note that it also criticizes the hero.... read more.. except this is a hero that turns every self-criticism into its own glorious travail, to be savored before one savors the carefree aftermath. The movie is resolutely on this guy's side as it looks through life, hoping all of destiny will bow to his version of romanticism, which remains self-centered but can be fulfilled when he is able to land an artsy chick that looks like a fashion model. The writers didn't learn much from High Fidelity.

    There are several good vulgar jokes. Something the movie doesn't explore is that nice-guy narcissism is often a well-developed fantasy of guys who first and foremost want to get laid. Then, they have the chutzpah to want the girl they had sex with to honor them for their good taste! Life is already hard before these guys add in their own problems; and once they do, life becomes downright distracting.

    Movies (500) Days of Yupster is somehow taking from: The Lonely Guy, Bottle Rocket, 9 to 5 and a Viagra commercial.
  • fb1033186916
    October 30, 2011
    fb1033186916
    A cleverly executed romantic comedy that firmly points out that a cliche could still remarkably amaze the watchers. Its intimate, cheerful and realistic take on life, love and moving on truly worked its way to make this film a total hit, both critical and box office.

View All (500) Days of Summer Reviews

Critic Reviews

Laremy Legel
May 6, 2011
Laremy Legel, Film.com

It's very smooth and well done; Marc Webb clearly has a solid visual eye and natural sense of pacing. Full Review

Roger Moore
July 29, 2009
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel

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

July 24, 2009
Minneapolis Star Tribune

The 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

Tom Long
July 24, 2009
Tom Long, Detroit News

This is movie magic most unexpected. Full Review

J. R. Jones
July 24, 2009
J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader

[A] visually witty, flawlessly played romantic comedy. Full Review

Lisa Kennedy
July 24, 2009
Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post

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

Christopher Orr
July 24, 2009
Christopher Orr, New Republic

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. Full Review

Bruce Demara
July 23, 2009
Bruce Demara, Toronto Star

Falling in love or falling out? This film offers a helpful tonic for either condition. Full Review

Peter Rainer
July 17, 2009
Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

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. Full Review

Michael Ordoña
July 17, 2009
Michael Ordoña, Los Angeles Times

(500) Days of Summer is something seldom seen: an original romantic comedy. Full Review

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    • Rachel Hansen: You should ask her.
    • Tom: Well, why rock the boat, that's what I'm thinking. Things are going well, you start putting labels on it? That's like the kiss of death. It's like saying 'I love you'.
    • Rachel Hansen: Yeah, I know what you mean. That's what happened between me and John.
    • Tom: Who the hell's John?
    • Rachel Hansen: My boyfriend before Mark.
    • Paul: Are you her boyfriend?
    • Tom: It's not that simple.Why,like, are we going steady?Come on guys, we're adults.We know how we feel, and we don't need to put labels on it - I mean boy friend, girlfriend,you know, all that stuff ,it's really juvenile.
    • McKenzie: You sound gay.
    • Paul: You really do.
    • Vance: [reading a card that Tom had written] Roses are red, violets are blue... Fuck you, whore!
    • Paul: Did she say hey instead of hi because you know that means she's a lesbian right?
    • Tom: That was my nickname in college, Perfectly Adequate and Handsome.
    • Summer Finn: They used to call me anal girl...
    • Tom: *spits up drink*
    • Summer Finn: I was very neat, and, organized.
    • Tom: We don't have to put a label on it, I just need to know you're not going to wake up in the morning and feel differently.
    • Summer Finn: I can't give you that Tom, no one can.
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(500) Days of Summer Trivia

  • What actor was in all these movies? (500) Days of Summer, The Happening, Winter Passing and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?  Answer »
  • Tagline: Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn't.  Answer »
  • Which band is Tom Hansen listening to in the lift in (500) Days of Summer?  Answer »
  • At the end of (500) Days of Summer what is the name of the girl?  Answer »
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