Film Review: Like Crazy

 

I once read a comment about Sundance that grasps the essence of Like Crazy: Indie filmmakers spend 10 years writing the perfect screenplay and don't spend 10 seconds thinking about how it is going to be shot. And thus we have Like Crazy, a film with a well thought out storyline with some poor cinematography. The film itself is about the love between Jacob (Star Trek's Anton Yelchin) and Anna (Brideshead Rivisted's Felicity Jones). Anna is a Brit living in LA on an education visa studying to become a writer when she meets Jacob. Their first date is remarkable for its simplicity and honesty. So many romance movies make grand gestures and make the romance seem artificial and over amplified. Here they don't downplay the importance of having fun and enjoying the sweet moments that real relationships are all about in the beginning. The date involves coffee, awkward silences, nervous laughter, gradually giving way to better conversation and real laughter. At one point Anna invites him up to her room and he sits in a chair and mocks it for being uncomfortable. It's the type of moment that is unnecessary but so telling about their personalities.
The relationship is going very well when Anna has to return home for the summer before she can return to LA and Jacob. They are dealing with the pressure of saying goodbye and spending the next few months apart when Anna, impulsively, decides the day before she leaves that she won't go. They spend the next two and a half months together and fall hopelessly in love with each other. The realism of their relationship makes you fall in love with them. Since Jacob doesn't have a whole lot of money, for Anna's birthday he makes her a new chair at his carpentry job and carves the bottom with the words "LIKE CRAZY." Again, it's these little things that make the characters so likable.
When Anna does go home for a week she comes back stateside and sends Jacob a text saying she is going through customs and to head to the airport. I mention the text message because unlike Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, this film uses electronic communication effectively and accurately. Jacob arrives at the airport with flowers only to learn that by breaking her education visa, she is unable to enter the country on her work visa and is immediately escorted back to England. This is the first real trouble the relationship hits and the rest of the film is about the characters trying to overcome the obstacle of being forced apart over a span of a few years.
Jennifer Lawrence (X-Men: First Class) makes a somewhat brief, but memorable appearance in an otherwise minimal cast that includes three other characters that have equally brief roles. For a film completely centered on two people, the pacing is never too slow and the characters are likable and behave believably enough to make it work. Although the movie doesn't always look the best, there are certainly some scenes that rely almost entirely on some interesting, inventive camera work. The appeal of this movie lies almost entirely on its raw and accurate portrayal of two people who love each other, like crazy.

B.