Spoiler Alert! Details of the film (500) Days of Summer will get revealed below! I don't want to ruin it for the 1 or 2 people who might actually read this blog.

We've been conditioned to believe in "the one," our soulmate. Jerry Maguire implanted in us the notion of another person "completing" us. Movies have happy endings for the guy and girl (or whatever the combination is) unless the girl or guy dies, tragically.

All of that makes a movie like (500) Days of Summer that much more startling and interesting. It's the story of just another romance in the lives of its two main characters, one of the many relationships most of us have that don't work out throughout our lives. These two aren't the one for each other, as the narrator helpfully tells us as the movie begins.

I liked almost everything about this film. Good music. Great acting. Witty and biting humor at times. It also dares to be a little different, to play with genre and timeline, and that is its most endearing quality. I could have done without the architecture montage, but the 80's dance number was funny and effective. The director, Marc Webb, took the courageous step to tell a story out of order. Driving home I pondered why this appeals to me so much- I'll go right for any book or movie that challenges the audience to piece together the sequence. It takes a confident artist to do this, one who knows his or her story intimately. I've used it several times in my own work and the odd part is that it comes so naturally. It unfolds organically as I'm writing, which may help explain why it works without too much tinkering.

Of course part of me was pulling for Summer and Tom to recapture their romance and move to the credits in an embrace (which says a lot about me). That they didn't makes this film the indie gem it's marketed as.

Overall it is definitely worth the matinee price (plus you get to see the loser guy from Garden State who worked in the Handi-World but with way more lines).