I am not sure I thought I would ever say these words about a modern love story -- it doesn't suck (that much.) Yes, that is my generous compliment to this generally unnecessary film that adds to the canon only that this genre at its best is can only be good enough to not be completely useless.

The director goes out of his way to warn us up front that this is not a love story although, he claims, it is a story about love. What it is, is an episodic look into the brief encounters of two people who had some attraction but not enough. It is no surprise that Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays your usual "nonman" popularized by films in the last few years. The real surprise is Zooey Deschanel plays a "nongirl" also. Both characters are not much of characters at all. There isn't really a story or the pretense of a plot. There is a theme though - that love actually works - just not in the way you think. Now that theme in its extreme generalness shields it from most argument.

So why is this movie worth watching? It is worth watching because it says, perhaps unintentionally, something about the vapidity of hipster culture and its ultimate validity within it's fundamental dissociation.