It’s impossible to watch Peter and Vandy without also thinking of 500 Days Of Summer, another relationship movie which played earlier in the day at the AFI Dallas Film Festival. The similarities between the way these two films are constructed is eerie, but what’s interesting is that they use this same format to explore entirely different things. 500 Days of Summer is not a love story. Peter & Vandy is. It’s not just a movie about love, it’s about two people falling in love. Not movie love, but realistic love with all the bumps and bruises anyone who’s been married for awhile knows that implies.
Peter & Vandy is the story of one relationship, but told out of order. As 500 Days of Summer does, it tells the story of Peter (Jason Ritter) and Vandy’s (Jess Weixler) life together by jumping between poignant moments, based on how they connect with each other rather than when they happened. As the movie moves forward the story of who they are begins to unfold and we start to see something special, flawed and imperfect though it may be, whenever they’re together.
And that’s what makes Peter & Vandy so special, so romantic, so utterly drunk with love. This isn’t the story of the perfect guy and the perfect girl, the story you’ve seen in every romance since the end of time. They’re just normal people. Their big romantic moments don’t happen in Paris while the movie swells, their relationship is defined in their PJs on a lazy Sunday morning.
The script makes Peter and Vandy a couple you can connect with. The actors make them people you want to believe in. Jason Ritter is outstanding as Peter. This guy has a huge career ahead of him. See Peter and Vandy if only to say you saw him when. Or see Peter and Vandy because like me, you’re a big, romantic softie who wants to believe love is something better and deeper than the usual big, silly, orchestral movie love. It’s not a slick Hollywood movie and there are times when it feels almost like you’re watching a really great television sitcom rather than a film, but it does such a great job of connecting on an emotional level that almost none of that matters. Great acting and smart writing make up for whatever the film lacks in Hollywood polish. Seek it out.
