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Critics In Love With (500) Days

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Jul 17, 2009 10:29 AM CDT

(Newser) – Critics are head over heels for (500) Days of Summer, a boy-meets-girl flick that shakes things up by telling the story out of order. Here’s what they’re saying:

The movie “turns the genre on its empty head and sees relationships for what they are—a bruising business,” writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. Stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel “play it for real, with a grasp of subtlety that goes beyond the call of breezy duty.”

It’s a “Gen-Y Annie Hall,” writes Owen Gleiberman of EW, except that director Marc Webb “uses his cleverness for humanity instead of postmodern superiority.”
Ty Burr of the Boston Globe actually thought it was too clever. (500) Days “should be everything that’s wrong with the remnants of independent American filmmaking,” he writes. But it’s got enough charm to leave you smiling, “making up in generic sweetness what it lacks in bite.”

[Videos (1)]

In this film publicity still released by Fox Searchlight, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, left, and Zooey Deschanel are shown in a scene from "500 Days of Summer." (AP Photo/Fox Searchlight, Chuck Zlotnick)

In this film publicity image released by Fox Searchlight films, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, left, and Zooey Deschanel are shown in a scene from, "500 Days of Summer." (AP Photo/Fox Searchlight, Chuck Zlotnick)

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Critics In Love With (500) Days