(500) Days of Summer

Film Threat Scott Knopf

You're going to hear a lot about 500 Days of Summer over the next few months. All of the good stuff is true. Any bad stuff you hear is not.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's a feat of star acting, and it helps make (500) Days not just bitter or sweet but everything in between.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Here is a rare movie that begins by telling us how it will end and is about how the hero has no idea why.

Premiere Staff (Not credited)

Much like the actual summer (the season, not the character), we never wanted it to end.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Visually witty, flawlessly played romantic comedy.

Los Angeles Times Michael Ordona

Something seldom seen: an original romantic comedy.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Much like Annie Hall did for a previous generation, (500) Days of Summer may be the movie that best captures a contemporary romantic sensibility.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

This is a romantic comedy that makes the concept of romantic comedies appealing again -- that reminds you how resonant and transporting they can be when they're done right.

New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott

You know how people say that they don't make romantic comedies like they used to? Turns out they do. At least, director Marc Webb does -- and has -- with his clever and sweet debut, 500 Days of Summer.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams

A movie that will be discovered, embraced and shared with friends like a favorite record album.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The casting is perfect. Webb has chosen leads who are familiar but not overexposed, and who are on equal footing (neither overshadows the other).

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A different kind of love story: an honest one that takes a piece out of you.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The film does a lovely job of balancing emotional clarity, formal trickery, pop sweetness, and heartfelt narrative. It is, yes, cute, and it is, yes, quirky. And it is entirely justified, estimable and loveable in being those things.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The film is, finally, a brilliant tap dance over a void: There’s no real drama when the inner life of the female lead is so shrouded, even if that’s the point.

Empire Staff (Not credited)

Perfectly played, simultaneously serious and light, endlessly inventive, this is a strong contender for the most original date movie of the year. (Terrific) stuff.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel charm the pants off us -- and each other! -- in this irresistible comedy.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

A romantic comedy that feels like real life.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The writing is often clever and the overall production playful and intelligent.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

A funny, seductive, and surprisingly honest dramatization of the ways we snooker ourselves into incompatible love.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The whole movie aspires to set an Annie Hall vibe, especially when Tom keeps trying to re-create, first with her and then with someone else.

San Francisco Chronicle David Wiegand

An irresistible feel-good movie about love gone bad.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

It's the oldest bittersweet story in the book, of course, but music-video director Marc Webb approaches his feature debut with great confidence, flair and a minimum of schmaltz.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Deschanel does what she does seemingly without effort, managing to convey Summer's mixed-up messed-upness.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The film has an easygoing, inquisitive spirit, heightened by Webb's visual conceits

Boston Globe Ty Burr

It's an "Annie Hall" for the iPod generation: über-designed, pleasing to the touch, making up in generic sweetness what it lacks in bite.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Slight, charming and refreshingly candid little picture.

Slate Dana Stevens

It's fun both to watch and to talk about afterward, and it possesses the elusive rom-com sine qua non: two equally appealing leads who bounce wonderfully off each other.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Boy gets girl and boy loses girl in convoluted, sometimes cloying but ultimately winning fashion in 500 Days of Summer.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

It's more like a love story in a blender. What is unexpected is the sincerity beneath the modest conceit that, yup, love hurts.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

And what makes this autopsy of a love affair funny is Tom's ironic, morose commentary as he revisits what happened.

Time Richard Corliss

Because the emotional drama is so one-sided, I just can't love you.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Because we know almost from the get-go that things will turn out bad-to-bittersweet for them, the movie is like one long autopsy of what went wrong, starting with Day No. 488.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

It goes down smoothly, thanks in large part to Joseph Gordon-Levitt's grounded lead performance and Marc Webb's slick direction, but it seems like every other scene coughs up a dispiriting cliché.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Ultimately, the best thing about (500) Days of Summer isn't its gimmicky script. It's the constant performance of Gordon-Levitt, who shifts, scene-by-scene, from moments of ebullience to abject dejection.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

An exhaustive and exhausting dissection of a relationship that was never all that promising in the first place.

NPR Nathan Lee

For all its rhetorical whimsy and hipster dressings, (500) Days of Summer is a thoroughly conservative affair, as culturally and romantically status quo as any Jennifer Aniston vehicle.