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Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. It’s a formula as old as drama, but it’s also sort of fanciful. In real life, the boy who loses the girl often sits brooding on the sidelines for months while his lost love lives it up with a new paramour. Enter (500) Days Of Summer, a movie that wants you to know up front that it’s not some silly love story. Instead, Summer is a movie about love and all its messy fallout — hurt feelings, confusion, resentment, etc. The film is also an assured directorial debut from music video director Marc Webb, and he gives his tale a clever structure and playful visual style that helps separate it from the standard rom-com pack.
This article appears in Jul 29 – Aug 4, 2009.
