By: Marina Yang

This is my review of the movie ‘(500) Days of Summer’ by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, produced by Mark Waters. The plot of this movie revolves around two co-workers/main characters, Tom (our protagonist) and Summer (the supposedly “antagonist”). Tom is the typical “lover boy”, falling heads over heels for his “soulmate”, believing love to be like a fairy tale. This is compared to Summer (his “soulmate”), who’s more laid back on the topic of love, and isn’t so serious but has her moments.

This movie is very intriguing as we revolve between the two, not truly knowing if either or both are the “antagonist” of this story; truly shaping people’s different perspectives and ideas on it. The two sides of the story are so simple yet complex, it causes the crowd to be in a dilemma between determining who’s truly in the wrong. Leading to no true answer.

But for me, I would say both are in the wrong and right, we are all humans with our own wants and morals. Tom took the friendly gestures to heart, taking them as signals that she “liked” him, and considered him as a “boyfriend”. While Summer used his devotion towards her for her own wants, only using him physically yet still seeing him as a “friend”. Though I can’t truly blame Tom for thinking like this, he really had no right to go berserk on her behalf and grow obsessive, because she never verbally confirmed the status of dating. But that does not make her innocent either. She played with him knowing he was affectionate towards her, easily being able to skim over conflict and start back at square one. I definitely found myself in a conflict at times throughout this movie, because although I resonated more with Tom, I understood Summers’ perspective too.

Despite my opinion, I would recommend this movie, like I said before it’s intriguing and I believe it could be a valuable lesson for some of us. It contains explicit language and behavior, but it lightly goes over it, so it’s not much of an issue.

I would give ‘(500) Days of Summer’ a 4.5/5. If you want to watch this movie, you will have to either buy or rent it as it is not streaming for free anywhere at this time.