Snapped early last evening on the 20th Century Fox lot after a screening of Marc Webb‘s 500 Days of Summer (Fox Searchlight, 7.17), which isn’t half bad and may be, in fact, be the most honest and agreeable blend of romantic headiness and sinking despair since Jerry Maguire. I’ll get into it in a subsequent post, but this could work nicely with the educated under-30 date crowd.

Young pot-bellied wildebeest males may shine it on, but Webb is seriously taken with the love and the #1 romantic myth surrounding it, which is that we all have a destiny to meet a perfect soulmate, etc. I came out loving Summer for having very persuasively debunked this idea — but not cynically and with feeling. And with an obvious affection for intelligent writing and the emotional legacy of The Graduate. It doesn’t wallow in cheap manipulation and emotional-behavioral pig vomit like so many other youth-romance pics. It’s the anti-I Love You Beth Cooper. And I could actually stand Joseph Gordon-Levitt this time.