Saturday, December 07, 2013

(7) Days of Zooey - Day 6 (#646.)

2009's (500) Days of Summer was Zooey's last major movie to date, and it's a heck of a way to go out.  It's her best one, her most defining, and a classic by any regard.  And it will positively break your heart.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt falls in love with her (such a hard task!) and spends the eponymous number of days attempting to figure out why the relationship just doesn't seem to work even though they seem to have exactly the right amount of chemistry.  The ending is particularly brutal, when Zooey turns up married in fairly short order to some other guy.  This is the one and only time I've close to not liking her.  But to be fair, her character was clear to Gordon-Levitt's from the start.  What he thought was kismet (because he's a hopeless romantic) was a lot of him seeing what he wanted to see.  Anyway, this is my generation's When Harry Met Sally..., and it shows Zooey's range better than anything else she's done.  It's exactly like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind but without all the science fiction, an atypical but also in a lot of ways very vintage affair, which of course is Zooey Deschanel in a nutshell.

7 comments:

PT Dilloway said...

That was her best work but it didn't really launch her into a movie star.

Tony Laplume said...

A critical success is not always, or often, a popular success. That's what this was, so it's no surprise. And it didn't exactly obviously paint her in the best possible light. People will rediscover it. She has plenty of time to make plenty more memorable movies.

Maurice Mitchell said...

I've never seen it, but it sounds like a decent movie. I hope you didn't spoil the ending. ;)

Unknown said...

Nice movie!
I'm sure she will find another role that fits her talents soon.

Tony Laplume said...

Maurice, in this case it's almost better to be forewarned. But, um...!

David, I sure hope so!

Remembering Grace said...

I haven't seen it yet. I dropped out of life the past three years or so. I'll catch up on stuff eventually. :)

Tony Laplume said...

Grace, Zooey makes good therapy. A lot of her roles seem to be geared toward helping cope with difficult situations.

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