Matthew Wayne Selznick

So, it seems like I mostly review romantic comedies when I review movies at all… or maybe it’s just lately. Anyway, a movie’s got to hit me pretty good, for better or worse, for me to want to write about it, and this one’s got me shaky in the stomach and twitchy-smiley and a little teary… no, make that all mixed up happy-sad verklept and inclined to write long, long sentences while the emotions and thoughts shuffle to get themselves in line. The last film I wrote about was a romantic comedy that wasn’t a comedy at all, and this one was very romantic and kinda funny but mostly just so, so sweet. So here we are.

“(500) Days of Summer” stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt (he was the kid in “3rd Rock From the Sun” but he’s grown into a kind of ligher-boned version of Mark Wahlberg) and Zooey Deschanel (“Elf” and a bunch of other stuff, but that’s where I fell in love with her, so that’s what matters here, thank you.) It’s a boy-meets-girl story told in a non-linear, meta-referential fashion (look for the Han Solo cameo in particular) that some might call cutesy and cheap, but it hit all the right notes for me. Heck, even the many uses of montage-with-music instead of dialogue (I usually don’t go for that) worked because during those sequences there was actual non-vocal stuff going on between the characters instead of romps through a field of daisies or running through a carnival midway winning kewpie dolls and eating cotton candy and the like.

So why did it work so well for me? It’s partially a case of right time / right movie — I need a little optimism and hope right now, and that’s ultimately what “(500) Days of Summer” delivered. Also, though, it’s a caring, smart, intimate movie enhanced in no small part by the subtle choices of Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel — and also those of Geoffrey Arend, who plays Gordon-Levitt’s character’s best friend and wingman. Everyone is just great.

This was an independent movie made for around seven million dollars (it’s earned it back five-fold) and it was apparently principle screenwriter Scott Neustadter’s first film. It was also inspired in part by a real-life relationship Neustadter had… and when I found that out, I had to nod slowly to myself. This is a personal film — Neustadter had something to say here, something that co-writer Michael H. Weber helped refine from the personal to the universal.

I don’t know how it is for you, but there are certain movies I know, in my gut, that I’ll like when I see the trailer. This was one of them, as was, off the top of my head, “Magnolia,” “Thank You For Smoking,” and “Funny People.” I still have to see “Funny People,” but my gut has been right every time. Right now, “Up In the Air” is on the list… I might go catch that in a day or two.

I digress. Point is, I love movies about people trying to figure out themselves, the people around them, and their worlds. It’s never cut and dried; there’s never a bad guy; I can almost guarantee that there won’t be any explosions or laser mazes and it probably won’t be in 3D. And that’s just fine by me.

I like movies that illustrate the shifting, beautiful ambiguities and challenges of being alive… movies that show a possible path, or, better, show you that it’s okay if the path keeps moving, so long as you get something from the scenery.

You know how you walk out at the end of some movies and you and the person you saw it with can’t stop talking about this part or that part? Sometimes, it’s an even better sign of excellence when you walk out of the theater and nobody says anything at all, all the way home.

Know what I mean? I like entertainment that pushes me, makes me feel something, leaves me transformed in some way. If you’re like that, too, you’ll probably like “(500) Days of Summer.”

As an aside: like the grossly under-appreciated 2006 romantic drama “The Lake House,” “(500) Days of Summer” features a lead character who is an architect and pays loving tribute to the architecture of the film’s location — in this case, Los Angeles. In “The Lake House,” Keanu Reeves played an architect in Chicago… and in 1993’s “Sleepless In Seattle,” Tom Hanks plays an architect who has just moved from Chicago as the movie begins. So… what is it with architects, architecture and romance movies? And Chicago..? Something to mull over.