Pseudo-Indie comedies. They seem to be the toast of Tinsel Town these days, helped by the likes of Little Miss Sunshine, Napoleon Dynamite and Juno to become bankable by the big studios. 500 Days of Summer is one such film, which on the surface has all of the telltale tropes of an indie comedy movie, but underneath is something more complex, curious and ultimately frustrating.

The title itself refers to the time period covered by the narrative, and I was perfectly happy with the name until a friend told me that the titular ‘Summer’ referred to the female lead, and not, as I had previously thought, the season. The two Ms should have given it away really. The plot itself jumps backwards and forwards between day 1, when Tom Hansen (played by the dinky Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meets Summer Finn (a befrigend Zooey Deschanel) at work, and day 500 when their relationship has gone through ups and downs, breakups and makeups and everything in between. The lack of linearity dices with disjointedness, but the writers have used it intelligently to draw parallels between the many stages of a relationship. There are some nice moments when universal truths are revealed through this temporal juxtaposition and anyone who’s been in a long relationship will relate to some of the situations examined. So structurally it’s well made and certainly enough to hold your attention.

Thematically it’s fairly broad, tackling issues including whether love exists, whether our lives and loves are predetermined and whether commitment and marriage do more harm than good. Again, a nice broad area for teens and couples to get their teeth into, and in some ways it takes a progressive look at gender roles within a relationship and doesn’t adhere to Hollywood conventions too stringently. But 500 Days of Summer is problematic in other ways. Yes indeed.

So what’s the problem with 500 Days of Summer? This film has been (rightly) described as quirky, though for some people ‘quirky’ is interchangeable with ‘irritating’, and it can be very hard at times to actually like the characters because of the relentlessly cool attitudes they exude and the distractingly stylish clothes that they wear. There are also far too many methods of narration, with a narrator parodying Morgan Freeman interjecting sporadically on top of occasional intertitles and an animated sketch which lets us know which day of the relationship is about to unfold before us. However, the biggest issue for me was the fact that it wasn’t actually that funny. And it’s not that it tries and fails to make us laugh, it’s just that it spends more time dealing with angst and heartbreak than it does setting up gags. It also refuses to stick to rom-com conventions, occasionally breaking the fourth wall to remind us we’re watching a movie (the most notable example being a Ferris Bueller-esque musical interlude). Whilst these moments are supposed to be funny, they ultimately detract from the film’s impact, disconnecting the trials of the characters from the constructed reality of the film and consequently dampening our reaction to them.

Whilst I won’t go into the particulars of the plot, the twists and turns of Tom and Summer’s relationship are unique enough to make this film stand out. It also manages to almost redeem itself for any of the clichés that it occasionally employs in the closing portion of the film thanks to a well hidden twist. However, all is spoiled in the final seconds as all of the values and traditions of romantic love which the film has questions are confirmed as true, and any rebellious edge that the film had is atomised and forgotten.

What I’ve not really addressed is whether I think you should see this movie or not. Well, if you’re willing to get past some of the problems its style and plot throw up then you’ll probably find a lot to like. I am a fan of rom-coms in general and also indie comedies, and I’m not afraid of sentimental, romantic movies because of an underlying ‘blokeishness’ (I went to see the tween-fest Band Slam a couple of weeks ago). But 500 Days of Summer promises to be so much more than all of that, and it’s just a pity that it couldn’t hold its nerve and end on a subversive note.