(500) Days of Summer: Romantic Comedy or Sad Love Tale?

By C. Nicole

Usually romantic comedies don’t exceed my expectations they are very repetitive and predictable. (500) days of Summer (Webb, 2009) is one of those films that have you wondering from beginning to end. This film, not only, subverts romantic comedies genre “regulations” it completely stays away from them; which has your brain pondering what am I watching?

            Usually the “standard” conventions are boy meets girl, complications happen, then boy wins girl back, but this movie mixes everything romantic comedies are known for. Most show the male character, completely and utterly under the woman characters spell, and they somewhat end up together after a long montage of bonding scenes. This particular movie in certain aspects did just that, but twisted the plot to totally throw you off your game. The male character (Tom) does in fact see Summer and think that she is the one for him, but doesn’t know anything about her. Summer is portrayed in the movie as an independent, hardworking, and in my opinion a man-eater. Women in the romantic comedy genres, dating back to the Screwball comedies in the 1930s, have always been strong women so the director/writers in some ways have stuck to their guns. The main reason that this particular film differentiates from the others is that it doesn’t lead you in the same direction like most. Of course, they meet in a slightly awkward (meet cute), elevator scene where she initiates a conversation about a band, and they start hanging out throughout the film, but it wasn’t what Tom thought they were doing. His friends and family, who were the corky and funny cliché supportive characters, were trying to tell him the good and bad things in their relationship and guide love-struck Tom. Tom, and most viewers, felt as if they were on the road to a relationship even though she did explain that she didn’t want anything serious, but we all had hope. Just for a split second most viewers felt as if Summer’s wall had fallen down and that she wasn’t a complete and total bitch, but of course we all were wrong.  It seems that she just drug Tom through the mud giving him false hope, when she was in fact seeing someone else. The film shows that every love story doesn’t end happily with a wonderful, cliché wedding and throwing of the white rice. I think in a way that Tom learned more about himself, at the end, and how love actually works when he found that Summer was engaged and acted like he never existed. The film didn’t give the audience what they wanted; by giving everyone idiotic hope like most “rom-coms”, it gave you reality.

            The director/writer really had to have a different outlook on certain relationships when creating this film. In more ways than one, I found it very refreshing to see something I haven’t seen before in the Romantic Comedy genre. In this very moment I’m still pondering what certain things meant in the film, and that’s what makes a good film.