(500) Days of Summer, the T-shirt

(click for adorable dimples)

This new poster is cute and those dimples are priceless, but the original one-sheet is still one of my favorites of 2009. Fox Searchlight + saffron yellow has added up to Oscar gold more than once. As several readers have noted, (500) Days of Summer is currently enjoying that rare phase on Rotten Tomatoes when a movie’s ratings are 100% positive.

Screen International:

Rethinking romantic-comedy conventions with a sharp eye and a soft heart, 500 Days Of Summer is an immensely pleasurable love story about two young people with a deep connection but an uncertain future. Making his feature debut, director Marc Webb guides Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel through a chronologically-scrambled narrative which traces the joys and sorrows of two appealing, well-drawn characters…

While it doesn’t have the same artistic heft as Woody Allen’s brilliant Annie Hall, 500 Days Of Summer does share with that melancholy film a desire to use unconventional narrative techniques to aggressively examine the mysteries of the human heart, offering fresh insights on the typical boy-meets-girl scenario.

Cinemablend:

Levitt is utterly brilliant as Tom, a hopeless romantic who believes he has at long last found the perfect girl. We’re with him as he struggles to get up the nerve to ask her out, makes a fool of himself at karaoke, and gets punched in the nose defending her honor. This is not George Clooney. Tom is awkward and frustrated, often unable to express his emotions. He’s also loyal and brash and all the things women are so often drawn to in the midst of young love. Zooey is a natural as the object of his affection. Tom sees in her only the perfect girl, but Deschanel does an amazing job of projecting something hidden underneath what he sees. Her performance is subtle, stunning, and only pays off fully at the movie’s end.

Opening July 17 in limited release. If you missed the trailer when we posted it last month, here’s a link.