(500) DAYS OF SUMMER

Starring: Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Writers: Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber
Director: Marc Webb

Okay, I have to get something off my chest and this blog is a particularly cathartic way of doing so without destroying things or getting arrested for public order offences. I know this movie got a ton of great reviews when it was released. It was nominated for two Golden Globes. It's won eighteen awards in total, many of them for its screenplay. Its director clearly has talent. It boasts not one but two actors I really like. Gordon-Levitt's especially fine in Looper and The Dark Knight Rises and I'm a fan of Ms Deschanel to the point where I've bought the She and Him albums. I'm impressed with not only her acting but her singing and songwriting too. If I bumped into her in the street - unlikely where I live, but... - I'd probably be a bundle of nerves, dribbling on about how great she is and making myself look a total pillock.

And yet, I can not stand this film. It irritates me to the point of insanity. Even now, I find it so self-consciously kooky that even thinking about it makes me nauseous. I'm sure it wasn't the intention of the film-makers to make a romantic comedy-drama that I didn't find romantic, comedic or dramatic. It made me want to run outside and yell obscenities about its smug, self-satisfied little way. It's the cinematic equivalent of that person that goes on about how they're really not cool when all the while they just want everyone to say "Oh, but you are cool" and then they'll at you smile in a faux-bashful way.

Right, let's get down to the plot before I destroy my laptop. Tom (Gordon-Levitt), a greetings card writer, is dumped by his girlfriend Summer (Deschanel) and he looks back over the 500 days of their relationship, wondering how, where and why everything went wrong. And with its non-linear hopping about back and forth, meaning you don't get the gradual deterioration of their situation over the course of the movie, I really should have enjoyed its original approach to the romcom format.

One of the main problems I have with the film is that the two main characters are so bloody annoying there's no chance of me having no emotional investment in anything they do or say. They visit IKEA and spend ages faffing about in there pretending they're a married couple and it's their house. They joke about how none of the taps in their place work and how it's lucky they have two kitchens side by side. If I'd been in IKEA and had to watch them dicking about while I was trying to buy a new sink unit I'd have been very tempted to tell them to fuck right off.

At one point in the film, Tom and Summer consummate their relationship. Over the course of a 500-day liaison I don't think that counts as a massive plot spoiler. The following morning, Tom is so happy that he goes straight into a dance number. Okay, it's a potentially charming and fun idea so why was I praying for an airstrike? Nothing in this film works for me, whether it's Tom's idealistic then fatalistic view of relationships or Summer's enforced quirkiness. The situations they find themselves in still don't ring true for me after a second viewing. Even their mutual appreciation of The Smiths just made me want to stop listening to The Smiths.

As for the clunky ending, please. I mean, really, please. That was just the crappy icing on a very disappointing cake.

The thing is, although the whole movie is still, for me, like Robert Shaw dragging his fingernails down the blackboard in that scene from Jaws over and over and over again, I have no doubt that lots of other people will really tune into it. They'll love the characters. They'll identify with the situations. They'll laugh at the fake arthouse movie bits. They'll be delighted by the impromptu dance number. And I'm happy that these people find joy in (500) Days of Summer. Me, I even dislike the parentheses around the number in the title and that's speaking as someone who uses parentheses a lot (actually, I don't...no, hold on, I do).