( Entertainment Weekly ) -- In the enchantingly original and romantic ( 500 ) Days of Summer , Summer ( Zooey Deschanel ) is a girl -- capricious , alluring , and not entirely knowable -- and Tom ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt ) is the greeting-card writer who convinces himself that she 's `` better than the girl of my dreams . '' Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel fall in love -- for a time -- in `` ( 500 ) Days of Summer . '' Five hundred days is the duration of their relationship , but the movie presents those days out of order , as an impish romantic flipbook , so that we keep skipping forward and back -- from , say , day 8 to day 154 . Most romantic comedies have half a dozen situations at best : Meet Cute , Infatuation , Pop Song Montage , Contrived Mix-Up , Angry Breakup , and Final Clinch . `` ( 500 ) Days of Summer '' is about the many unclassifiable moments in between . Director Marc Webb , working from Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber 's witty script , stages each scene as a vivid snapshot memory , and his sense of play is boundless . The film leaps in a heartbeat from the furtive glances ( and shared fixation on the Smiths ) that ignite an office love affair to a rooftop-party reconciliation that plays out , via split screen , in two simultaneous versions ( how the hero wants it to be and how it happens ) to a morning-after-the-first-sex saunter that evolves , with joyful hilarity , into a musical number scored to `` You Make My Dreams . '' This has to be the first movie ever to give equal props to Morrissey and Hall & Oates . `` ( 500 ) Days '' is like a mood ring cued to the ups , downs , and confusions of modern love . It 's a Gen-Y `` Annie Hall '' made by a new-style Wes Anderson who uses his cleverness for humanity instead of postmodern superiority . None of it would work , though , without such lived-in performances . Deschanel makes the lovely , sensuous Summer just precocious enough to know what she wants without coming out and saying it , and Gordon-Levitt , with his junior Springsteenian chin jut , lets you read every glimmer of hope , pain , lust , and befuddlement beneath his nervy facade . It 's a feat of star acting , and it helps make `` ( 500 ) Days '' not just bitter or sweet but everything in between . EW Grade : A. CLICK HERE to Try 2 RISK FREE issues of Entertainment Weekly . Copyright 2009 Entertainment Weekly and Time Inc. All rights reserved .
`` ( 500 ) Days of Summer '' is absolutely wonderful , says EW . Film is about an 18-month relationship , but avoids pitfalls of formula . Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel are outstanding .