(Not) A Typical Rom-Com, Geddit?

(500) Days of Summer (2009)

Rating ... D+ (26)

How do you create the opposite of Hollywood's recent fad of Meet the Parents-descended rom-coms and still screw up? Erase all the grotesque minor characters and pointless story digressions where conflicts predicated on miscommunication thwart protagonist interaction for half an hour from Sandra Bullock's last/next vehicle, and what remains? A blank canvas? Or maybe a film that offers up something equally uninspired but verifiably not the aforementioned, ad nauseum? For those awaiting the opposite of suck, the promise was too good to be the next Before Sun.

One thing's certain, the opposite of Hollywood is insufferable indie, and it's not for lack of trying. (500) isn't quite the year's Garden State but it has no problem shoving its too-cute brand of indiequirk in your face anyway. Personally, I have no beef with quirk persay (an example from the film - not only does 500 play on the season summer and Deschanel's character name Summer, Levitt's next meets a girl named Autumn, and the coincidence is dropped with trite a-ha! revelation, to say nothing of the obvious method of cementing functional character roles); unfortunately, the problem persists that (500)'s forced uniqueness, which permeates heavily into its romance, does not actually depict genuine human behavior with more insight or understanding than its manufactured Hollywood counterpart, but simply exists for the sake of juxtaposition, with no real identity of its own.

Hollywood rom-coms can be accused of reducing adult relationships to child's play, but (500)'s subpar replacement finds scarcely developed characters indulging in bad karaoke for nonexistent laughs and playing the penis penis Penis Penis PENIS PENIS! game. Barring a quaintly creative expectations/reality cinematographic schism, (500) fails to bring ingenuity to its depiction of diffused romance, instead opting for repetition. (Directly following moments of elation between Levitt and Deschanel, director Marc Webb fancies cutting ahead several hundred days to post-breakup to hammer home the foreshadowing.) In other news, love is still a vague, undefinable feeling of ecstasy and really, really "deep" conceits include how capital-L Life just got in the way of things that don't work out! I just realized something: the opposite of capital punishment is life in prison.