In Theaters: (500) Days of Summer

In every way, Marc Webb's (500) Days of Summer is conceived to be the ultimate mix CD. It's so specifically tailored that it will make certain audience members think "It's like this movie was made for me!" (even if Fox Searchlight hopes that enough moviegoers respond to it to effectively disprove that argument) and it skips around in its romantic chronology so much that it resembles a nonlinear reshuffling of carefully labored-over track numbers.

Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is in love with Summer (Zooey Deschanel) -- or was in love with her, depending on where you are in the movie. That's because Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber take great pleasure in skipping around through all five hundred days of Tom and Summer's tortured romance. A scene of pure romantic bliss -- Day 61, let's say -- could be wickedly juxtaposed with the withering relationship to come on Day 342.

It's not a complicated conceit (at least, not in this post-Pulp Fiction, Lost-crazy era), but it's one that could become too precious if not for the grounded charm of leads Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel. As Gordon-Levitt matures and age begins to burrow into his boyish face, he's become a relaxed yet still cerebral performer. Deschanel is yet again cast as the man-child love interest, but she intrigues by holding her cards close to the vest. Summer declares right off the bat that she's not interested in becoming too close to Tom, and for as much as he attempts to prove her wrong, she's still an enigma (by choice -- and in her mind, by necessity) at the end of Day 500.

Like any mix CD, you can expect a few dud moments: I'm going to pretend that Tom didn't have a sage 10-year-old sister who dispenses romantic advice to him, just like I'm always going to skip over my ex-boyfriend's mysterious inclusion of Sarah MacLachlan on the mix he made for me not long ago. And though I didn't mind it in the film, I don't look forward to the real-life hipsters who will deride certain cultural dog-tags littered through (500) Days -- the Ikea shopping scene, the specific indie music cues -- the closer to home each strikes.

For a quirky romantic comedy, though, there's enough of a heartbeat in the leads to make a heartbreak actually matter. College students, you have your new dorm room poster.