Marc Webb, 2009
Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a lifelong romantic, falls in love with Summer (Zooey Deschanel), a cynic who doesn't believe in love. Happiness and misery both ensue, non-chronologically.Loved this one, but I'm probably dead center in the target audience, so take that as you will. Even things that I probably should hate, like the overly wise child who talks like an adult and dishes out advice (Chloe Moretz), seemed to work. Most of the success of the movie comes down to the cast - especially Zooey Deschanel, who manages to hint at a lot of depth that we don't fully get to see because the point of view stays squarely with Tom the whole time. It wouldn't be hard to let Summer turn into the villain of the piece, and some people have interpreted it that way as it is - but I don't think Zooey allows that to happen. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is great as well, but he has the easier job, especially with the (for once well-timed and unobtrusive) narration helping with some of the heavy lifting.
This is not to say that the actors salvaged weak material - both the script and direction were top-notch. I particularly appreciated that they continually refrained from overplaying their hand with both the emotional content and the clever structural tricks. A scene late in the movie where Tom's expectation of a certain event and the reality of the event play out in simultaneous split-screen works only because the differences are fairly subtle until the end of the sequence. Actually, let me amend that - they do overplay the last moments of the film just a tad. Fortunately, the movie is pretty much unsinkable by that point.
9/10
1 comment:
Agreed.
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