Film Review: Like Crazy
Olly Mann was captivated by aspects of Like Crazy, but somehow expected more.
29 Jan 2012, 14:36
Like Crazy
After scooping the top prize at Sundance last year, Like Crazy is attracting more attention than your average lo-fi love story, not least because its young star, Felicity Jones, is widely being touted as the British Zooey Deschanel (Hallowed be her hotness). The good news is that she lives up to expectations: competely at ease on the screen, thoroughly plausible in her role, and I defy you not to want to get in her knickers. But the film itself doesn't benefit from all the buzz. At heart it's a straightforward boy-meets-girl tale, albeit one which deftly examines the emotional repercussions of a long-term, transatlantic relationship. A nice little film, but one that's too intimate and restrained to really live up to the hype.
The story begins with Anna (Jones), an English girl at a Californian college, making a nervous play for Jacob (Anton Yelchin), a guy in her class. As we expect from a young man in this sort of indie romance, but rarely observe in real life, Jacob has innate confidence, exemplified by his astute sense of style and career ambitions (he's training to be a furniture designer), yet is unfailingly polite and mumbles most of his words (he's vulnerable!). He also has LOVELY hair.
We're not quite sure what Anna sees in him, but in any case, their union is inevitable, and so we follow Jacob and Anna as they go on lots of twee dates – holding hands, listening to Graceland, go-karting – and spend a Summer bonking the living daylights out of each other, though director Drake Doremus is too unobtrusive to show us too much of that.
The awkwardness of their young love, the not knowing what to do next, the not knowing where to sit when your student bedsit contains only a bed: all this will be familiar to any recent undergraduate. Then Anna overstays her American visa and returns to London, which means she and Jacob are separated, and sporadically reunited, for rest of the film, and this, too, will be readily identifiable to many in the audience who have Skyped their way through a Summer. How will their long-distance relationship survive? To what extent will their careers – and other suitors – get in their way? All of this is engagingly played out across numerous scenes, mostly duologues between the two protagonists, spanning months and years. But for me it felt just a little TOO common-place to feel interesting; like looking at other people's holiday snaps. The actors really throw themselves at the story, with semi-improvised scenes of surprising resonance, and the performances and the muted style of the film are tastefully done. But I just kept wanting something more to happen.
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