Pickpocket wrote:500 Days of Summer was way too cheesy to have great dialogue. It seemed like a movie for 13-19 year olds.
Not according to a large majority of the R/T critics who reviewed it. I found the comment in bold near the end particularly edifying:
The anti-love story, (500) Days of Summer, is supported by a clever script and some superior acting by Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
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Bruce DeMara entertainment reporter
(500) Days of Summer
(3 1/2 out of 4)
Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel. Directed by Marc Webb. 95 minutes. At the Varsity. PG
It's a topsy-turvy world in (500) Days of Summer, one in which the guy falls in love but it's the girl who doesn't want anything beyond sex and friendship, or anything that hints at emotional commitment.
When Summer (Zooey Deschanel) explains to boyfriend Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) that they've recently been "fighting like Sid and Nancy" – a reference to Sex Pistols punk rocker Sid Vicious who savagely murdered girlfriend Nancy Spungen in 1978 – she makes it clear that she's Sid and he's Nancy.
Early in the film when Summer drops the bomb on Tom, and his two friends prove hopeless at alleviating his terrible grief, they turn to his younger sister, Rachel, to deliver some bracing and comforting words of wisdom.
The script by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber is marvelous throughout as well as unexpectedly witty and wise, considering their previous collaboration was – yikes! – The Pink Panther 2.
Director Marc Webb adeptly uses Los Angeles as a backdrop to send the audience back and forth in time over the 500 days from when Tom first lays eyes on Summer until he's finally able to wash that girl right out of his hair.
But it's the performance by Gordon-Levitt as the initially happy-go-lucky twentysomething slacker Tom – a trained architect who's content to write greeting cards – that makes this offbeat not-really-a-love story work so well.
Best known for his role as the youngest alien on the TV series, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Gordon-Levitt displays a depth and breadth of skill in making his character believable and likeable, proof that his role in earlier films, such as the teen film noir murder mystery, Brick, was no fluke. This guy has got the chops.
Deschanel is very good as the enigmatic blue-eyed siren, whom a narrator tells us from the outset possesses the "Summer Effect," the ability to induce young men to buy record amounts of ice cream and landlords to offer substantially reduced rents.
There's loads of pop love songs throughout – including Patrick Swayze's sappy "She's Like the Wind" – scads of great dialogue, a soupçon of social satire aimed at consumerism and a nice poke of French surrealist filmmaking that is sublime.
Falling in love or falling out? This film offers a helpful tonic for either condition.
Cheesy is way overplaying your need to stick by your original defective assessment.