(500) Days of Summer

(500) Days of Summer promises more than it delivers, regrettably. This factory made YouTube generation rom-com kicks off at breakneck speed delivering a drole reconstruction of young man Tom’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) unruly love affair with young girl Summer (Zooey Deschanel), whom he meets at work. A first encounter in a lift listening to The Smiths is charming, and play-acting ‘mummy and daddy ‘ in their local IKEA a wry critique at the illusion of happy I-love-you-forever identikit families.

Former music director Marc Webb has fun paying homage to Bergman here, a bit of Fellini there, plus a little light musical, some Disney animation, Belle and Sebastian and a great joke about Henry Miller; however it’s not quite enough to keep us in there for the duration. The narrative gimmick of playing the story back to front eventually wears thin and Tom’s search for his soul mate ends up in territory a tad more vacuous than vastly preferable Knocked Up. In other words, there is little pathos at the film’s conclusion and you’re left wanting to watch repeats of The Graduate and High Fidelity, both films of which the director has clearly drawn from but not improved upon.

General release from Fri 4 Sep. (12A) 94min