An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Evening Standard rating
Reader rating
Dir: Marc Webb.
Cast: Geoffrey Arend, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Clark Gregg, Matthew Gray Gubler, Chloe Moretz, Zooey Deschanel
Description: Tom has always had a passion for architecture and is enraptured by the Big Apple with its mix of old and new. During the day, he writes platitudes in greetings cards, impressing best friends McKenzie and Paul with his ability to find the words for every occasion. Humdrum routine changes with the arrival of new girl Summer. Tom is smitten but the courtship doesn't match his old-fashioned ideals.
Country: US. 2009. 95mins
Summer loving: Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the dumped boyfriend to Zooey Deschanel’s heartbreaker
There is a scene, somewhere near the start of video director Marc Webb’s first feature, where Summer, the object of desire, dumps Tom, her feckless suitor, while comparing their relationship to that of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen.
“Sid stabbed Nancy seven times with a kitchen knife,” Tom complains. “We have disagreements, but I hardly think I’m Sid Vicious.”
“No,” Summer replies, “I’m Sid.”
Seasoned observers of independent American cinema will spot several clues to this film’s genre in that little exchange. The pop culture references distinguish it from average Hollywood fare, and the punchline of the joke suggests that some kind of sexual role reversal has taken place. The film is written by two men — Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber — and is a dry, unsentimental look at love in which the hero, Tom, is a Morrissey-loving milksop whose attitude to relationships was damaged by his fatal misunderstanding of The Graduate. In other words, with apologies to the late Ms Spungen, this is a romcom for Nancy boys.
That, by the way, is not to disparage it. In a world where Judd “40 Year Old Virgin” Apatow can be confused with an auteur, any softening of the conventional wisdom which assumes that men like smut while women love hearts and shoes (but mostly shoes) is to be welcomed. There is only one Apatow-like moment here, a wordplay on the word “anal”, but even that is almost innocent. (“I was very neat,” Summer explains, after Tom’s gasp of shock). And there are moments of emotional recognition that go beyond the Nick Hornby-ish cultural shorthand. The bit where, after an evening of karaoke, Tom takes a very long time to not kiss Summer is quite heartbreaking. And the scene where the two lovers display their mutual fascination by agreeing to shout the word “penis” in a public place is authentically embarrassing: it’s not that you like the characters for doing it — quite the reverse — but it does manage to capture the illogical dizziness of the freshly lovesick.
Summer, you may have gleaned, is a girl, played with dreamy insouciance by Zooey Deschanel. She has big eyes, dark hair, size eight shoes, a fondness for tight tops, and a heart-shaped birthmark. She likes Magritte and Hopper. She thinks Ringo is the best Beatle. (Attentive boys will now be aware that the girl has flaws.)
Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who resembles a fresh-faced Mark Wahlberg), meanwhile, isn’t so much a geek as an indie everyman. He wears a Joy Division T-shirt and enjoys existential French movies where everyone is miserable. He’s not a nerd — he has the indie kid’s inbuilt sense of cultural superiority to sustain him — but his self-loathing does extend to knowing that his job, writing the messages for greetings cards, is inappropriate for a man of his taste and erudition. (It also allows the script to have some well-aimed fun at prefabricated sentiment.)
So, while Tom can appreciate the loveliness of Summer, he doesn’t believe, at heart, that he deserves her affection. She, meanwhile, informs him from the start that she is not interested in a serious relationship; she is young and just wants to have fun. “Holy shit,” Tom’s friend Mackenzie exclaims on hearing this, “you’re a dude!”
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The arc of their ill-starred affair is conventional but is made to seem less so by the film’s structure, which relays scenes from their 500-day friendship out of order. This randomness may be an attempt to replicate the confused state of mind of the freshly jilted Tom as he looks for clues to his romantic failure but it also keeps things fresh. It’s worth bearing in mind that the action is rendered from Tom’s perspective, so it runs from idealised adoration to a post-coital dance sequence, punctuated by crushing disappointment. Slightly annoyingly, the film also employs a narrator (Richard McGonagle, impersonating Morgan Freeman) as if to underline the fact that Tom is reworking his experience into a palatable myth.
Comparisons with Woody Allen are misplaced — the lines don’t punch the way Woody’s used to — but the cinematography does a good job of making unfashionable corners of Los Angeles look like Allen’s Manhattan. The same could be said of Alex Holdridge’s 2008 film, In Search of a Midnight Kiss, another smart comedy which explored the radical idea that men might have emotions.
Andrew O’Hagan is away.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
I agree with the above review. But for me the real magic of the movie is how close it hits to home, and I imagine this isn't too far off for many others. Walking out of the theater I didn't remember much of the film, but rather my own past experiences with love.
If you've ever been hopelessly in love with someone, this movie will definitely leave you feeling that old familiar feeling.
- Omar, NJ, USA
A very overrated film. A lot of chemistry between the main two characters, randon scenes, flashing forwards and backwards and God knows where else, just to mix it up. But in truth mixing it up did nothing for the film. For me a film counts if I can remember the scenes, the structure, the story, the impact, two weeks later. I saw this two weeks ago and cannot remember too much about it.
- Roger Goldsmith, Southsea, Hants
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