2009 Film With Classic Rock Surprise Ranked Best Movie to Heal a Broken Heart
Breaking up is hard to do. You know this. But you don't have to go at it alone. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel are here for you. Ranked as the very best remedy for healing a broken heart, the forever emotionally relatable (500) Days of Summertops Brides' list of "feel-good movies to watch after a breakup." And we couldn't agree more. Especially since the film's classic rock surprise is guaranteed to crack a smile.
Touted as a "story about love" rather than a love story, the film underscores its doomed romance through carefully chosen musical cues that hint at Tom and Summer's fate. From Patrick Swayze's "She's Like the Wind" to Temper Trap's "Sweet Disposition" and Simon & Garfunkel's "Bookends," each track carries themes of transience, longing, or even real-life band breakups. Even the upbeat mid-movie surprise sequence set to Hall & Oates' "You Make My Dreams Come True" was selected with irony in mind, as the duo had also split. The result is a soundtrack that deepens the film's emotional storytelling, rather than just enhances the traditional rom-com tone.
For the uninitiated, (500) Days of Summer covers a year in the love life of a hopeless romantic named Tom Hansen. A greeting card writer, he meets Deschanel's blue-eyed beauty at work. Her name is Summer Finn, she loves The Smiths, and she's super honest, even warning Tom upfront that she doesn't believe in love. And still, their story about love begins. Unfolding over a nonlinear timeline, showing Tom's memory vs. reality, the viewer is swept up in Tom's grief, confusion, and romantic disillusionment.
Inspired by real-life heartbreak, a lot of the movie's narrative is borrowed from screenwriter Scott Neustadter getting dumped by a woman named Jenny Beckman, Refinery29 notes. Music video director-turned-filmmaker Marc Webb adds that the color blue is used heavily in the film to both enhance his leading lady's baby blues, but to also stay loyal to the overall blue mood of the movie. Red, the color of love, is seen only twice: as an origami bird and on Minka Kelly's Autumn at the end.
So, final verdict: You'll laugh, you'll cry, you might even feel a little lighter by the end of Webb's debut film. It's proof that even when hearts break, they mend. Life moves forward. And sometimes, the right person is just on the other side of lonely. As Deschanel once put it: "Everyone has the heartbreak that shapes them in a way that they could never go back to the innocence that they had before." Hang in there.
Related: 1963 Nostalgic Hit That Pokes Fun at Elvis Presley Named in Best Rock Movies of All Time
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This story was originally published April 30, 2026 at 4:18 PM.