500 Days of Summer — Can You Spare Some Plus ca Change?
“A young man falls head over heels for a girl who only sees him as a casual affair; he’s crushed by his unrequited love, until he learns that there’s more than one fish in the romantic sea and finds a promising new relationship.”
That’s the ‘logline’ for 500 Days of Summer.
Hollywood makes tons of rom coms. They are cheap to make and even if they don’t fill theaters, they usually make their money back in rentals (they are rented and re-rented by their female audiece).
Alas, most of them suck. Most romantic comedies are frightfully stale and so unoriginal that we men, if forced or tricked into the movie theater to see a rom com, find themselves wincing and silently screaming within five minutes, and squirming in their theater seat, ready to strangle something…
But not 500 Days Of Summer (which was discovered at Sundance, where it was a hit.) 500 Days has enough laughs, originality and wit to keep that from happening – at least for the first two acts. 500 Days of Summer also breaks up the time line – showing us scenes from near the end of the relationship at the beginning of the movie, and mixing up the times of its scenes. This modest, TARANTINO-like time chop gives 500 Days some surprise and originality — and for even that we are thankful. Bless you, writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, and director Marc Webb.
500 Days of Summer is the story of TOM, a greeting card writer who falls head over heels for a girl SUMMER, who doesn’t really love him back. Now Summer likes Tom — and she has sex with him and hangs out with him — but she tells him from the start she’s not serious and she means it.
But he doesn’t get that. He doesn’t get that she’s not going to fall in love with him. Tom’s thickheaded refusal to see reality takes up most of the three acts.
By the third act, the audience starts growing restless and bored. At least, we did.
Now the film makers are brilliant and creative, and they seem to have (tardily, and probably in the editing suite) recognized this problem, and in the bottom of the Third Act, Tom suddenly decides to go back to architecture school (we know this because he starts sketching cool buildings on his wall) and in the last two minutes of the movie, he meets another girl. We are shown that he’s over Summer and perhaps ready for another adventure. Who knows, maybe this time the girl will love him back?
It ain’t enough. It ain’t nearly enough. We’re already asleep, and have been for at least one act.
In a great romantic comedy, like JUNO, the heroine changes in a wonderful way. In JUNO, Juno goes from not believing love can last, to believing it can – and from not being able to love Paulie, to loving him completely. This is a wonderful change, and it takes place from the beginning of Act One to the end of Act Three.
So why does 500 DAYS work at all? Because it’s got some scenes that are funny.
Romantic comedies, more than any other genre, rely on witty, sparkling dialogue. The rom com genre is where the descendants of all the ghosts of KATE HEPBURN and CARY GRANT have gone – the genre is the last refuge of intelligent and funny people making hilariously perceptive, gimlet-eyed observations about life. In the genre of romantic comedy, dialogue reigns supreme.
500 Days of Summer has some funny lines. Some funny scene incidents. And while it is set in Los Angeles (like 95 percent of movies are, along with New York) at least it is a Los Angeles we don’t see often – the crepuscular urban streets of downtown.
The funny bits mean that 500 DAYS manages to keep the party going for at least Act One and part of Act Two. It also means that the movie is a modest money-maker. And that puts it up above most romantic comedies.
As a script reader for the studios, 90 percent of the time I pass on a script, it is because the hero doesn’t believably and compellingly change.
Giving your hero a big dramatic change (internally as well as externally) is the biggest secret of grabbing an audience.
Think of your favorite movie. Did the hero change? Did he learn and earn his way to a big transformation? Unless the hero was a particular kind of superhero (like JAMAL in SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) they DID change. A lot.
500 Days cost 7.5 million and has made 23 million. That’s not bad but it’s not stellar because advertising takes an additional 8 million, so the movie really cost about 16 million to make, and it’s made 7 million. Who knows what the outcome could have been if we saw Tom wake up sooner from his summer daze?
How Movies Work 