Boy meets girl. Boy likes girl. Girl likes boy a little too much. Girl's visa is revoked forcing her out of the U.S and forcing them into a long distance relationship. The special charm and originality of Like Crazy comes not from the plot which has, in various forms, been repeated several times, but from the way the material is handled through the performances, the (naturalistic, often improvised) dialogue and the techniques it uses to manipulate time (generally useful for a film that spans several years.)
The girl, Anna, is played by Felicity Jones a young British beauty who is bound to become a star. Anna is an eager, young, romantic, writer. She is so deeply in love that she is willing to risk losing her visa to spend a few more months with her beloved, Jacob (Anton Yelchin.) He is the more rational, less outwardly emotional and overall the more mature of the two. He still loves her but is more careful and reserved. He warns her that what she plans to do is dangerous. He gets her an engraved bracelet. "Patience" he counsels. She ignores his pleas. In an ingenious montage that lasts less than a minute, the movie speeds through those two months and cuts right to the instant when Anna is told that she cannot go back to the U.S. This is one of the movie's strength; that it knows how to fast forward to what is essential. It also does one peculiar thing concerning time. It uses small jumps in time, moving characters around the frame slightly and creating an unsettling effect of before and after, harmony then chaos. It is unsettling but powerful.
Time moves forward, their lives go on. Anna meets Simon. Jacob meets Sam. She is played by Jennifer Lawrence. Her few minutes of screen time here impacted me more than her 2+ hours of playing the lead of The Hunger Games. Sam is a person, not a plot device, never just "the other woman." Lawrence is a terrific actress, she made The Hunger Games bearable, even likable, but the script gave her almost nothing to work with. "The Hunger Games" is an example of a movie with a great initial idea that became a missed opportunity at the end. Like Crazy is just the opposite. It takes an ordinary idea and elevates it through extraordinary filmmaking.
PS- stinger (post credit) scenes are a big phenomenon right now. All Marvel movies have one, The Avengers even had 2. I believe Like Crazy has a stinger, although it is in a less traditional form. The closing song is the stinger. Listen to the lyrics, and stay until the end because it could change the way you interpret the movie.
Verdict- 4/4
Like Crazy (2011) PG-13 1 h 30 min
the movie made me think of this song.
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