"This is a story of boy meets girl," begins the wry, probing narrator of 500 Days of Summer, and with that the film takes off a breakneck speed into a funny, true-to-life, and unique dissection of the unruly and unpredictable year and a half of one young man's no-holds-barred love affair. And as the story winds backwards and forwards through Tom and Summer's on-again, off-again, sometimes blissful, often tumultuous dalliance, it covers the whole dizzying territory from infatuation, dating, and sex to separation, recrimination and redemption in a whirl of time-jumps, split screens, karaoke numbers, and cinematic verve - all of which adds up to a kaleidoscopic portrait of why, and how, we still struggle so laughably, cringingly hard to make sense of love...and hopefully make it real.