Film Review: Like Crazy

Director: Drake Doremus

I think if you speak to anybody around the age of 30 about long distance relationships, they will tell you about their experiences of their friend's experiences of it and the negative effect it normally has. The missing one another, the feeling that you are moving on with your life without them and the temptations that can arise. Drake Doremus tries to take us through his own experience of this as this film is loosely based around the issues he had with his ex-wife when she had immigrations problems moving from to the US from Austria. The whole film was shot using a cheap Canon camera and the whole budget came in under $250,000.

Anton Yelchin as Jacob and Felicity Jones as Anna

It follows Jacob who is a furniture designer and Anna as they meet at University in LA but plan on how to stay together after they graduate as Anna's student visa is about to expire and she has to go back to England. She finds herself fighting bureaucracy over her ban to visit the USA whilst trying to keep the connection going with Jacob. But rest assured this isn't the formulaic chick flick that some people might believe it to be.

One of my favourite scenes was their summer being shown as numerous different shots of them lying asleep in bed together cycled through really quickly and a shot of Anna standing at the airport terminal as Jacob leaves with the world going past her in fast forward while she waits for him to return. Neither are original concepts but both were well done within this movie, in the second case it portrayed that Anna's life was standing still for the month's whilst Jacob was away. The ending to the movie is also quite clever and will naturally catch you a bit off-guard.

Director Drake Doremus

I've still not been able to quite place my finger on what I didn't like about the two main actors together in the film, they were both very believable in the characters they played but not as the two halves of the couple they made up. It was something that played on my mind as the movie progressed. There were a couple of moments in the film where sections of the story seemed to be in fast forward and you weren't quite sure how we got there. My girlfriend actually had to ask me whether a scene was looking back at something from before the previous scene or whether the film had continued into the future, the latter being true, but I didn't really see why such a distinct jump in time was needed. All it seemed to do was confuse the viewer and leave us wondering where are we up to now?

2/4 bittersweet tale of long distance romance that sometimes leaves you lost in between.