It's easy to fall in love with 'Summer'

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Boy does something stupid, and hilarity ensues. The story is as old as Genesis.

But in “(500) Days of Summer,” Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt revive this tired plotline with offbeat humor and a few unique twists that mirror a real-life romance much more closely than any romantic comedy before its time.

The film follows the relationship of Tom Hansen (Gordon-Levitt), a hopeless romantic stuck in a dead-end job writing greeting cards, and Summer Finn (Deschanel), his boss’s personal assistant who quickly becomes the unlikely victim of Tom’s charms even after expressing her disbelief in falling in love.

Unlike most stories, this one is told through a jumbled progression of days, occurring to the viewer as they might to someone recalling a past relationship. This effectively tells the story, relaying the ups and downs of Summer and Tom’s romance in a way most of us have experienced ourselves – looking back on a relationship gone sour to try and figure out where it first went wrong.

Although self-proclaimed rom-coms are rarely known for their unique flair and smart wit, this one combines the charm of a boy-meets-girl-kind-of-story and the irony of a realistic romance to keep us all from falling asleep on our couches after another predictable snooze-fest.