Blue Valentine's clueless younger brother...
This try-hard, romantic non-story stars Felicity Jones as Anna, a pretentious British student writer who falls for a quiet furniture designer in LA. They're so giddily young and in love that the thought of a summer apart pushes Anna to violate the terms of her visa and stay on in LA.
This crazy, passionate rule-breaking causes trouble from here on out. When Anna eventually leaves the US, she can't get back in because they're cracking down on over-privileged students who read bad poetry to daydreaming designers.
Years later, they're both well into their anticipated successful careers. She's a blogger at a lifestyle magazine (that boasts Finola Hughes as editor) where she dwells on her life-changing, formulaic relationship with Jacob, and he's on the up and up among LA's bespoke furniture connoisseurs. Nonetheless, that pesky visa violation just won't go away and not even their marriage certificate can overturn her ban, nor the many notebooks of concert tickets, doodles and memories that Anna's been keeping, naturally. And that Argos-like identity bracelet that reads 'patience' is shockingly proved useless. Should they consider him coming to London? Only briefly.
And so begin the rows about commitment and fidelity and the shots of each of them supposedly having fun at bars but secretly pining of course. This is the starkest of the many problems with Like Crazy, it's shot through with predictable cinematic clichés of what romance is. There's even a scene of Jacob running around an airport franticly looking for Anna while carrying a bunch of flowers. The whole film plays out like an over-extended student music video.
There's nothing distinctive about these characters nor their relationship. What's worse is that any problems they have are their own fault, which makes all their troubles seem childish and trivial. There are no villains keeping them apart. Instead, Anna's parents – the fantastic as always Oliver Muirhead and Alex Kingston – are charming, encouraging and full of kind advice. So Anna and Jacob have little to overcome but their own stupidity, which makes it difficult for the audience to bypass boredom and arrive at sympathy.
Director and co-writer Drake Doremus tends to lean toward the eternal search for love in his films, so this departure from the idyllic is different for him. Unfortunately it's endlessly dull for everyone else.
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