A love story is both a physical and emotional tale, one that can be deeply personal and heartbreaking for an audience to experience. Director Drake Doremus’ film Like Crazy beautifully illustrates how your first real love is as thrilling and blissful as it is devastating. When a British college student (Felicity Jones) falls for her American classmate (Anton Yelchin) they embark on a passionate and life-changing journey only to be separated when she violates the terms of her visa.
Utilizing a young extremely talented and beautiful cast LIKE CRAZY teaches us the downfalls of long distance relationships, overstaying your visa and also having a somewhat ‘open’ relationship. This is also a film that will test a whole range of emotions, I found at times I was feeling happy then sad, slightly depressed and even angry but don’t let this hinder your movie going experience LIKE CRAZY is an very honest portrayal of finding love and the lengths you will go to keep it alive.
The cast is what makes LIKE CRAZY what it is a brilliant film, in the lead role is Felicity Jones shes still a relative new comer seen recently on Australian screens in the film ‘Chalet Girl’ plays the innocent, British and incredibly cute Anna. Jones was sensational in ‘Chalet Girl’ so seeing this other side of her really proves her range and that shes capable of playing any part. Anton Yelchin who you may have seen in ‘Terminator Salvation’ opposite Sam Worthington or ‘Star Trek’ brings the role of Jacob alive as the American Student who falls in love with Anna in class. I’ve been a fan of his since being in Terminator he seems to have once again an innocent onscreen presence which really helps the role and works extremely positive for him. Lastly Jennifer Lawrence who has really been the ‘It’ girl for the past year ever since her Oscar nomination for ‘Winters Bone’ and is about to smash our screens in ‘The Hunger Games’ has a relatively small part in the film which I won’t go into much detail about but as always shes brilliant in any role.
Two things stand out for me about this film the first one is that the film wasn’t really scripted the director Drake Doremus said he had an outline of what will happen throughout but as far as dialogue goes Yelchin and Jones pretty much improvised the lot. Now it takes a rather accomplished actor to be able to this and having a young cast its really hard for me to fathom that they did this but once again as I said earlier it proves about how talented this cast is and the emotional ride they take you on I really really take my hat off to them. And secondly the story itself I loved it, its been a while since a love story has tackled this subject and really nailed it, I personally haven’t had a long distance relationship like this but I know people who have and when I’ve talked to them about the film they agreed with pretty much everything.
LIKE CRAZY is an incredibly beautiful and deeply moving film, my advice take a couple of tissues. I give this film 4.5 out of 5 stars and it is now showing in cinemas everywhere.