Paramount Vantage and Indian Paintbrush
Anton Yelchin (left) is Jacob and Felicity Jones is Anna in "Like Crazy," winner of the Grand Jury Prize in Drama at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in Drama at this year's Sundance Film Festival, "Like Crazy" offers what movie publicists would call an "honest" portrait of young lovers frustrated if not thwarted by geography and red tape.
Low-budget yet pleasing to the eyes, "Like Crazy" was shot with a tiny handheld Canon EOS 7D camera, which sells for less than $1,500 on Amazon. The movie is a wonderful advertisement for the camera, but also a reminder that so-called authenticity can be as phony as a million-dollar special effect.
Like Crazy beautifully illustrates how your first real love is as thrilling and blissful as it is devastating. When a British college student falls for ...
Rating: PG-13 for sexual content and brief strong language
Length: 89 minutes
Released: October 28, 2011 Limited
Cast: Felicity Jones, Anton Yelchin, Chris Messina, Alex Kingston, Jennifer Lawrence
Director: Drake Doremus
Writer: Drake Doremus, Ben York Jones
Anton Yelchin is Jacob, a "furniture design" major at a Los Angeles college; Felicity Jones is Anna, a journalism student from England. The couple fall hard for each other, and Felicity ignores her parents' advice and overstays her U.S. visit to remain with Jacob, allowing her student visa to expire. As a result, she's unable to return to the U.S. after she finally goes back to England to see her folks. For the most part, the movie, written and directed by Drake Doremus and co-written by Ben York Jones, chronicles the problems inherent to the extended long-distance relationship that results from Anna's immature and (to my mind) unsympathetic decision. (One of these problems proves to be another woman, played by Jennifer Lawrence.)
With its mumblecore-esque presentation (intimate camerawork, abrupt edits, lack of insistent musical score), "Like Crazy" means to distinguish itself from such slick and glossy Hollywood romances as "Going the Distance" with Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, which also examined long-distance love. But the movie often seems more slothful than honest, as if it didn't want to do the heavy lifting — narratvie twists, witty jokes — required of commercial films.
Although the film is thrifty in production value, Jacob and Anna are as privileged as the characters played by the likes of Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis in more lavish romantic comedies. Right out of college, Jacob becomes a successful furniture designer with his own business, while Anna effortlessly advances to the post of "junior editor" at the London magazine where she works. The movie is Hollywood fantasy-friendly in other ways, too. Jacob gives Anna a bracelet that reads "PATIENCE"; when Anna sleeps with another man for the first time, the bracelet comes off and Doremus calls our attention to it with a close-up. The film is filled with such movie-movie moments, yet its low-key style continually argues that it's an "indie" project, perhaps so Doremus can end the move abruptly instead of bothering to come up with a satisfying resolution. "Like Crazy" is, like, lazy.
"Like Crazy" is at the Studio on the Square.
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Comments » 1
elevatorlady writes:
You said it! What a snooze fest. It's really depressing that this trash won Sundance.
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