Warning: this will probably contain spoilers.
I saw this last night myself, and there were some good points. Zooey Deschanel really is very attractive, and I was rather keen on Joseph Gordon Levitt's ties and shirts. I've been thinking about wearing ties more myself, so I spent a good portion of the film considering how his wardrobe would look on me.
Unfortunately that was it for the good parts. It's a spectacularly badly made film. At the start we have these sub-Wes Anderson bits with the voiceover, but then after a bit they get forgotten about. Alright, that could be the film trying to say no, this is not a cute little romance in a fantasy land at all that's just JGL's rose-tinted expectations at the beginning of a relationship. Except then they forgot that all of their locations were ridiculously cutesy as well, and the characters are universally sticking to those cute wardrobe colours, and then there's the whole wedding bit... so it's all still thoroughly fantasy land just minus any more hackneyed dance scenes and less bad voiceover (thank god). So that just failed.
Then there's the misogyny. Admittedly the film makes a point of being misogynistic in the opening, so it's upfront about it gives an impression of trying to present things from JGL's perspective. But then they forgot to give Zooey Deschanel much of a character beyond one scene where she cries at the end of The Graduate, and the fact that admittedly her behaviour is rather believable. Any good work there is fucked up by them making her into a trope, she's the pixie girl there to help JGL learn to live his dream. Because of course all he has to do to be an architect is take some risks and believe in himself, and he'll mysteriously retain his extremely expensive looking apartment while unemployed. And then there's that ending, where all girls want to get married really and of course fate brings him a new girl all of his own for being a good boy and doing the dream living thing. Basically it gave the impression of a film that was trying not to be creepily misogynistic, but the filmmakers were too crap to pull that off so it was your standard misogynistic romantic comedy example 2658990.
There were a load of parts that grated. The Smiths bit was admittedly hugely aggravating. "Oh my god! A girl has heard of the 1980s top 40 hit machine The Smiths! She must have listened to the radio once or twice!" Or how about the redheaded woman who's only function is to tell JGL that he's got nothing to attack Zooey Deschanel about and then disappear once her function for his life has been served (women only exist in this film to act as means to improve the life of a man modelled on the scriptwriter. The man must be an enormous dickhead). But I think the point where I would have actually kicked the shit out of the writer if the fuckhead had been in the audience was the bit where they go to the art gallery and it basically gets all Daily Mail reader. Not the worst thing in it but it was the last straw. Took me a good half hour to calm down from just how pissed off this film made me.
