500 Days of Summer: Review

Boy gets girl and boy loses girl in convoluted, sometimes cloying but ultimately winning fashion in "500 Days of Summer." Stylish feature debut by longtime musicvideo director Marc Webb goes out of its way to take an unconventional approach to telling one of the oldest stories in the book, only to prevail by embracing the fact that the fundamental things apply -- a cute leading couple, a rooting interest in their welfare and a genuine feeling for heartbreak and the belief that life must go on. Set for July 24 release, this looks like a real commercial winner with young audiences.

In an era when a house style is fundamentally antithetical to the nature of the film business, Fox Searchlight could now be said to be developing something akin to such a style, or at least a keen feel for the tastes of its bright and youthful niche audience. It's hard to watch "Summer" without at times thinking of "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Juno," for the time-jumping structure and lustrous visual style of the former, the strong identification with young lovers of the latter and the musical distinctiveness of both.

It's spoiling nothing to reveal that the central romance doesn't work out, as the structure of Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber's script spins on offering moments from the entire relationship in unchronological bits and pieces with the aim of creating an emotional mosaic. Impact of the same piece presented in normal order would probably be nearly identical, but while the temporal jigsaw puzzle will strike some as an attention-getting mannerism, the device will likely serve its purpose in making a sentiment-based story seem distinctive and unusual enough to be cool to its intended audience.

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