Movie Review: 500 Days of Summer, one to miss

I depart from my normal topics to review a movie. I'm so mad that I wasted an hour on it that I'm writing a review! I tried to post it on Yahoo Reviews but it said I had already posted a review. I'm so sick of buggy websites, as sick of them as I am of dumb movies. Anyway, here's the review...

If you like Hallmark greeting cards, IKEA furniture, and humdrum fashions, you might like 500 Days of Summer.

I found the movie boring, visually unappealing (except for the cute actors), and messily directed. It jumped from romantic comedy, to faux documentary, to a feeble attempt at Woody Allen-like dialog about the futility of happiness. The characters were irritating and uninteresting. The office scenes were typical office dullness, not worthy of being in a movie. The scenes of LA were laughable. Why pretend that LA is a hustling big city with a vibrant downtown, decent public transportation, and old architecture? The real LA has its charms: sprawling suburbs, Eichler houses, fast cars and 10-lane freeways, beaches, lots of sunshine and palm trees, gorgeous people with tans and scantily-dressed strong bodies. It's dumb to pretend it's something else.

We don't learn much about the lead female character other than she's quirky. She likes to yell obscenities in public and Ringo Starr is her favorite Beatle. The fact that she likes Ringo Starr says a lot. He was mediocre (compared to John, Paul, and George). This movie is mediocre. The lead male character is a bit more interesting but not much. His little sister may have had the best lines but the actress didn't enunciate and I couldn't understand them.

I hardly ever walk out of movies, but I wanted to leave this one pretty quickly. My husband wanted to stay, but, after an hour, he wanted to walk out. By that time, I was slightly curious whether the characters would finally make a commitment and/or demonstrate personal growth as expected in character-based movies. But, nanh. Not interested enough to stick around. I walked out with him.

Let me guess. The boy dumps his job writing greeting cards and becomes an architect. The girl goes back to Michigan and raises chickens. They each find true love with someone else, but they keep in touch via Twitter.