Directed by Marc Webb

Zooey Deschanel stakes a further claim to the Kooky crown of Hollywood in this superior rom-com that shows off its indie roots with snappy dialogue and inventive film-making, but in the end keeps itself conventional enough to have a wider appeal. She is Summer, and the 500 days are those of the relationship between her and Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). But here's the innovation. We see the course of true love failing to run smooth filtered through Tom's memory in random non- chronological fashion.

Of course, when I say random I don't mean that at all, because the surges and hiccups of their affair are presented in a meticulously planned fashion to provide optimum fun and pleasant melancholy in just about equal measure. Both the pair, though cool as you like, work for a naff greetings card business, a source of some hilarity, and there's instant bonding when Summer overhears Tom's iPod playing a Smiths' ditty in the lift. She's a fan too, and it soon begins to look like a pairing made in heaven. Quirkiness rules, as Deschanel is disarmingly charming, funny and unpredictable, while Tom provides a hopelessly smitten foil. But Summer claims there's no such thing as love, whereas Tom is at heart as old fashioned a schmuck as they come, and it's not long before his rueful meditating on the 500 days reveals later stages which don't look so rosy. The juxtaposition of happy early days with painful falling apart make for extra poignancy - in particular there's a painful scene played in split screen, where in one half we seen his expectations of a party he's invited to where he imagines a reconciliation, and in the other ‘what really happened'. This inventiveness in the telling of the tale is a great method of keeping the audience on their toes, and I can tell all those rom-com refuseniks out there that it's fun for them too. But this inventive structure is also its weakness, in that we never get anywhere near understanding, and therefore really sympathising with, Summer. There's a kind of emptiness at her heart, and strangely she becomes less interesting as the film goes on.

Comparisons have been made with Annie Hall, which though superficially in style and subject matter it may resemble, it's miles away in warmth and the feel of a real, crazy or not, relationship. And Deschanel, though smart, funny and eminently watchable, is no Diane Keaton, or not yet anyway. The a-chronological montage of the process of their 500 days is a chopping up rather than a disection, and in the end does become a mite tiresome. And sadly the final scene, where a melancholy Tom meets another sassy girl by the name of Autumn, and off it all goes again, is not only disappointing in its obviousness, but locates this film after all back in conventional lightweight Hollywood comedy land. Pity.