(500) Days of Summer (2009)

Director: Marc Webb

Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel. Geoffrey Arend, Chloë Grace Moretz

Have I Seen it Before: Never. It’s odd. Had I seen it in while it was still making the rounds in the festival circuit, it might have been a High Fidelity (2000) for a newer, somehow more neurotic age. Had I seen it during its theatrical run, it probably would have meant very little to me.

Did I Like It: Seeing it over a decade and a half later, it becomew something of an interesting cultural artifact. I’ve been Tom (Gordon-Levitt), although I wanted to make motion pictures and was* the guy who had all the DVDs and would have followed a woman practically anywhere if she expressed even a tolerance for the films of Woody Allen**.

You watch this film and you’re supposed to either feel more deeply the fact that you are Tom, or remember the time in which you were him. Summer (Deschanel, evoking the pupa stage between the cynical bloodhound of her earlier work, and the guileless Gal Friday she metamophosed into during New Girl) thus becomes the perfect black hat for that time in your life.

But let’s be honest, people: Hasn’t there beena time when we were Summer, just as much as we were Tom? Where our armor was impenetrable and the only governing element in our lives was our suspicion of other people?

Didn’t we leave some people in our wake during those times? I missed this movie for the better part of seventeen years***, but maybe that’s the right amount of time to wait. During that entire time, Summer has been painted memetically as one of the great villains of the screen, but we are the villain, just as much as we are the hero.

Maybe I picked exactly the right time to watch the film.

Oh.

Wait.

I get it. Her name is Summer. Now I’m all caught up.

*Still am, technically.

*Don’t still do that, for the record.

**How in the hell have we gotten to the point where people born after the release of The Dark Knight (2008) are now able to go to R-rated movies unencumbered? Don’t answer that.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

Director: Garth Jennings

Cast: Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel

Have I Seen it Before: I’m fairly sure I had? Although, as  the ending of this version of the story plays out, my memory felt a little fuzzy. That might have more to do with me having read the novel a few times over the years, and that version remains solid in my head.

Did I Like It: At the time of release, a number of sources questioned the casting of Mos Def as Ford Prefect, despite Adams himself saying that Arthur Dent (Freeman) was the only character who needed to be British. I don’t need to guess as to people’s objection to Mos Def, because it’s pretty obvious on the face of it, and I think he’s perfectly cast in the role, channeling a being of pure eccentricities through the film.

The problem is that Prefect is far too truncated in the context of a feature motion picture, so much so that he is delightfully daffy for the film’s opening minutes, and then is relegated to merely a passenger on board the Heart of Gold. It’s a real shame that the film felt the need to find some kind of restrictive structure for itself, and in doing so opted to be a romantic comedy film which could just as easily been titled When Arthur Met Trillian.

I’ve often thought that certain properties are best suited to certain formats. Batman is more at home in a monthly comic book. Star Trek is at its best on hour-long TV. Star Wars reaches its maximum potential in feature-length movies*. Hitchhiker’s is probably better off as either a radio series or in prose. Things are less limiting there.

*And can we be really honest? Only did so in its first two times at bat.