The studios keep churning out quirky romantic comedies, and although they’re still popular with the public, there hasn’t been one that has really captured the imagination since the Bridget Jones films. (500) Days of Summer is being talked of as the film that has brought the romantic comedy back to life. Directed by the newcomer Marc Webb, it’s an indie romcom, which means that instead of schmaltz, you get quirkiness. Instead of people who look and glow like Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, you have leads who have pimples and bad hair days and prefer the Smiths to Sinatra. And instead of love conquering all, it merely limps off into the sunset.

The opening voice-over warns us that this is a boy-meets-girl tale, “but not a love story”. Actually, it is a love story — a tale of unrequited love — one that follows the 500-day romance between Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and the new girl in the office, Summer (Zooey Deschanel). The action moves between the past, when Tom was in heaven, and his present hell of having lost her.

It starts off with the best scene in the film: Tom getting dumped by Summer at a restaurant. They’re having pancakes when she says they shouldn’t see each other any more because they argue all the time. “We’re like Sid and Nancy,” says Summer. Tom is freaked by the suggestion that he’s like Sid Vicious. “No, I’m Sid and you’re Nancy,” she explains. If only the dialogue was as consistently funny and fresh as this.

The film never really explains why they break up. Never mind. From bust-up, we go back in time to how it all began. Tom, who once wanted to be an architect, writes the gooey stuff you find on greeting cards. When a new, beautiful secretary, Summer, turns up, heads start to turn and Tom’s heart starts to beat faster. But he doesn’t think he stands a chance, until he discovers she too loves the Smiths. And then she makes the first move.

They share a lot of things when it comes to movies and music. But he is a romantic who believes in the idea of the one and only true love; Summer is the realist who doesn’t believe in anything but having a bit of fun. “There’s no such thing as true love,” she tells him, and furthermore she doesn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend. Poor love-struck Tom tries to be cool. Eventually, however, he cracks and demands to know what is going on between them. He wants certainty; she wants her freedom.

The curious thing is that they’re meant to be intelligent, modern, metropolitan types, yet they never discuss their relationship in any depth. For example, Tom never makes the obvious comment that Summer is just like one of those blokes who fear commitment. And he never asks what the rules of their noncommittal relationship are: would she be happy if he had sex with other people? Is she allowed to sleep with other people?

The film’s premise — romantic boy falls for unromantic girl — is a good one. But Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber’s screenplay favours cute quirkiness over content. Once it has set up the premise, the film doesn’t have anything to say about love or contemporary romance. Ten years from now, nobody will look back and say of this film: that’s how it was between men and women back then. There are no hard truths or nutritious nuggets of wisdom here. The Big Idea that animates the film comes when Tom tells the greeting-card workers that their product — along with movies and pop music — is damaging people by creating unrealistic expectations, and filling hearts and minds with sugar-coated love fantasies and syrupy sentiments. Talk about an easy target.

And am I the only one who finds Tom and Summer unbearable characters? Who would want to go out with a guy who dresses like Diane Keaton in Annie Hall? And who would want to go out with a girl like Summer, who thinks it’s really funny to sit in a park and shout “penis” at the top of her voice? Not me.

(500) Days of Summer likes to think it has brought a refreshing realism and hip pop sensibility to the boy-meets-girl genre, but it’s ultimately as soppy and fake as any mainstream romcom. The director of photography, Eric Steelberg, frequently piles on the golden hues so that the two leads look like they are coated in honey; the city of LA has never looked so photogenic.

Too timid to be truly cynical about love and too eager for box-office success to try to be a really new kind of romantic comedy, the film fails the ultimate romantic-comedy test: not only does it lack enough laughs, but you’re never emotionally involved with the fate of Summer and Tom.

12A, 95 mins

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