500 Days Of Summer, as reviewed by an elder statesman

As dictated to Giles Brody by his occasional employer.

In the hopes of wooing a certain young lady in my local shop I decided to join their DVD club.

No sooner had I replaced the 35 mm projector in my screening room with a VHS playing device that I was informed that I would have to replace the blasted thing with a D-Vid which plays film with CD Roms. Now according to the young man who served me at the Her Majesty’s Vinyl D-Vid CD Roms Division, I’ll soon have to update to Blue Tube. The lengths I have gone for this woman have already exceeded the accumulative efforts I put into my previous four marriages. I’ve never cared for the dratted medium of the blabber bores, my interest in them was severely curtailed by the death of the beautiful Greta Gribbles, a bit player in the bawdy “Wait, Some Scoundrel Has Interfered With The Sash Covering The Ladies Dressing Room Door” series of my youth.

Greta Gribles, ninth in the front row, lighting up the screen

First film of the club, brackets the five hundred, and the B-picture follow up, “Humid Summers of Love”. This is the first of my many entries concerning the film in chunks of twenty minutes or so.

500 DAYS OF SUMMER

The opening song is performed by a woman whose voice summons up the face of an individual in possession of deeply unattractive features. I hesitate to paint all young people with one brush but it seems to me that she is a drug addict.

A flat chested young lady, curiosuly named Tom, is counselled on matters of the heart by her infant sister.

Though at first my reaction to the entire scenario was one of shock at its inappropriateness, I soon warmed to the child, who possessed a wisdom beyond her years. She has the shrewdness of Clytemnestra, the prudence of Claudius and the voice of a vexed lamb bleating its defiance. Could Tom be the same opiate enthusiast as the singer of the opening song? Perhaps.

Clytemnestra at the scene of her death. She shall be missed.

Tom’s office is a wonder to behold. Straight away it beats any office I had my workers operating in. Windows! Comfy chairs! How do they expect to get a jot of work out of these lolligaggers. This is what the offices in heaven are like, where the angels sit around an enormous alabaster table, thwarting the fates and delivering salvation.

A drunk young woman with bosoms has taken the eye of the heroine Tom. Could this be the titular Summer? And could it be that Tom (no doubt called so because she is something of a Tom Boy) is one of those beans I’ve been hearing about? And out in broad daylight no less. Tom’s problem is that she hasn’t had a good once over by a real man. Perhaps I could write to the actress who plays “Tom” and offer her my services, should she be so inclined.

Tom is with two of her male chums, hereafter Drip Brick and Splinty, hereafter two of her male chums. The little sister, hereafter Hansel, is giving Tom romantic advice. There are no objections to the character Tom’s lifestyle. The characters are no doubt too disturbed to retort.

Seven minutes in, and it would seem that the proof is indeed in the pudding. Tom has had some hand in designing Other Mothers Day cards for beans, spreading her sapphoist propaganda into our beloved WH Smiths.

Eight minutes. There seems to be a narrator. Perhaps he was late for the recording on the day they made this cinematic effort. The film business seems to be a terribly exhausting endeavour. It is my understanding that the film is very costly, but modern equipment allows one to momentarily stop the recording. It is during these precious 20 or so seconds that the directors move about everything on the “set” very quickly in order to ready it for the quickly approaching next scene. Movie magic indeed. At the same time though, why bother?

NARRATOR: “There’s only two types of people in the world. Women and men.”

Very true, but might I be so bold as to make an amendment. There’s only three types of people in the world. Women, men and messy eaters. Its rampant these days and there’s simply no excuse for it. If you think without hesitation that you are not one of the damnable majority, might I suggest placing a mirror in front of yourself the next time you dine and study your conduct, with particular attention to the area of the mouth.

Messy eating. There’s simply no excuse in this day and age, what with etiquette books being in such abundance.

Nine minutes. My machine appears to have been tampered with. The scene in the office was followed by a scene where Tom and Summer appear to be courting. That was fast. I know that young people need to be rid of their virginities at earlier ages so as to discourage the onslaught of the modern Aids flu, but I feel that with all this baggage, modern romances miss some of the more magical elements of romances of old. Character building romances based on longing glances culminating to (another) wedding. How many young people nowadays are forced to wait until the fifth year anniversary of the marriage before consummating? Not many I’d wager. Naturally there was a doctor on hand to dispense advice and encouragement, just in case you should think of the old me as being a sort of a tart.

An offscreen Scotsman is singing about chaos and struggle. If you passed a law banning moaning in Scotland it wouldn’t be long before its inhabitants began thrashing themselves in front of trains for fun, so want would they be for purpose. Except for Lord Abbigsnale of course!

Lord Abbigsnale. A thoroughly good egg.

Summer and Tom seem to be bonding over music. They both have hearing aids. The directors made an excellent choice, whether deliberate or accidental, to play music whenever one of the films many deaf characters attaches their ear to their hearing appendage (still not having a go at the Scots! And it being an appendage of England!). Another stark choice is how characters wearing their listening enhancers seem less likely to participate in a discussion once they’ve gone to all the bally trouble of putting the ruddy thing on in the first place. Most enraging and artistic. I both hope and fear that the films author may turn out to be something of a modern day Van Gogh. The hope is for cinema, the fear is for the torment such genius would have on those closest to him.

The terrible burden of genius

Summer and Tom are bonding over their enthusiasm for smiths. It is possible that they’re indulging in irony so rich and creamy that to even look at it you would immediately become stricken with Type 2 Diabetes. Whenever I attempted to woo a woman through conversation, I too found it useful to comment on matters we could both relate to, such as the wearing of shoes. The more things change, the more things change.

Eleven minutes. It would seem that the young and fiery Tom has reached something of an epiphany. Tom has done some soul searching and it would seem that a life writing quips for cards is not the life that Tom had envisioned for herself. She would prefer instead to become a lady architect. How delightfully cute, she could design a big pink breast shaped dome that she and all her bean chums could congregate in. There they could drink pink champagne. How utterly, utterly charming.

A few gals having a drink and a titter.

Twelves minutes in and its all quips on deck. Nicknames are the name of the game, and the inamorato with the niftiest nom de plume wins the pinch!
Summer encourages Tom to pursue her dreams of becoming a lady architect, which does indeed seem like an exciting field of work. One wonders how people in fiction have loftier goals then most mortals. For example e.g. they never want to be horse shooters or harbour dreams of working on a golf course.

More again soon, for now I must sleep.

Giles Brody is a writer whose insolence and bad attitude will not be tolerated for much longer, let me tell you that for nothing.