Review: Like Crazy

Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones play college kids who quickly fall in love. He’s got designs on being in the furniture-making business, she’s a British exchange student who shares his love of Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’. Graduation comes and out of sheer, stupid laziness, Jones allows her visa to have expired. So after spending time back home in the UK, she finds she is unable to gain entry into the US. With Yelchin now having his own furniture business, he is unwilling to move, and Jones wouldn’t think to ask. So the couple attempt the long-distance relationship route, hoping one day that Jones will be cleared to travel. In the meantime, they understandably find themselves being offered more convenient romantic options (Yelchin with Jennifer Lawrence, Jones with Charlie Bewley). But it just isn’t the same. And yet, if Jones’ travel issues were sorted, would things still be the same as when they left off? Or would the moment have passed?

I could probably count on just one hand the number of great romantic/relationship movies out there. To be honest, I think Rob Reiner got it pretty damn perfect in 1989 with “When Harry Met Sally”, which hasn’t aged one bit. This 2011 film from director Drake Doremus (who has done very little before or since) and co-writer Ben York Jones (a writer-actor in mostly short films) is not quite up to that film’s standards, but it’s nonetheless clearly a romantic film written by an actual human being. The sleeper of 2011, it’s actually kind of a beautiful love story, and with one or two exceptions, there aren’t very many ‘Hollywood’ or ‘plot-driven’ moments. Even when a spanner is thrown in the works at the least opportune time...it’s not an unrealistic one. As for the central mistake that pretty much sets things in motion, it’s a completely infuriatingly idiotic one...but also an extremely common one that I’m sure some will relate to. Here, for once, is a pretty believable contrivance, albeit also an easily bloody preventable one. You could certainly argue, though, that if one person has a travel issue, it might be easier for the other person to just move, instead of investing all your time in getting the person’s travel issues sorted. The issue is brought up, but probably not as early and often as I would’ve liked. But that doesn’t really make the film unrealistic, it’s more nitpicking than anything.

This film feels achingly real, like you’re actually witnessing a real long-distance relationship, between two genuinely likeable, flawed people who you actually want to see end up together by the conclusion. These aren’t perfect people, but they are nice people, and that’s sadly rare in movies. Hell it’s more sadly rarer still in real-life.

The two central performances are also crucial here, as is the supposedly largely improvised dialogue. Anton Yelchin is one of those guys capable of being likeable, but also being just a hair away from being ‘creepy, bi-polar stalker guy’. Jesse Eisenberg being the poster boy for such a thing. But here, he’s definitely likeable and relatable. Even better is Emma Roberts lookalike Felicity Jones, who thankfully is a much, much better actress than Roberts. This girl really has something, is extremely appealing like a British version of Anna Kendrick or something. She’s absolutely terrific. I did find it ironic, though that a pre-Oscar win Jennifer Lawrence would play the ‘other’ girl, whilst Jones hasn’t done a whole helluva lot since this film (Sadly, because she’s far more appealing and talented than Lawrence if you ask me). At any rate, Yelchin and Jones have undeniable chemistry here and that is absolutely vital.

Sadly, the film isn’t without flaw. Cinematographer John Guleserian should be figuratively taken out and shot for his completely unstable, ruinous hand-held cinematography. I’m not sure if he was nervous, has Parkinson’s, or is just really bad at his job, but if ever there was a film that needed some Dogme crap stuff, it’s not this one. Such cinematography isn’t realistic, it’s just another kind of artifice.

It’s a beautiful, sometimes painful story and any kind of technical intrusion merely pulls one out of the experience. The ending is kind of moving, but I’m not sure it’s the right ending for this particular film. The film, and these characters seemed to deserve a much more upbeat, if unrealistic ending. That said, it’s somewhat left open to interpretation, and I don’t think the ending plays as pessimistically as some have suggested. It’s just not as enthusiastically happy as I would’ve liked. But that’s seriously nitpicking, folks. If this film didn’t look like it was filmed like a crap home movie, it would be a pretty terrific film. As is, it’s pretty good, one of the better romantic films of the last decade, and quite realistic. It’s not very well-known, but check it out if you have the chance. You might hate it, you might really like it, there seems no middle ground here. I was firmly in the latter category.

Rating: B