Like Crazy

2/5

Like Crazy is Twilight with jump cuts. That may sound a tad unfair, but let me break it down for you: two post-grad lovebirds—he’s an LA native and she’s a British exchange student—idiotically decide to disregard the girl’s expired student visa and spend an extra summer shacking up in Santa Monica. When Immigration rain on their parade—refusing to the let her return to the States, even for a visit—the two (Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones, if you were wondering) spend the rest of the film moping about being stuck on separate continents. When they’re together, like after he flies 15 hours across the Atlantic just to see her, they continue moping about the fact that his visits are so short (cue the violins). So I’m sorry to report, there are no vampires, but there’s still enough listless pining and longing for five Twilight movies.

As for the jump cuts, director Drake Doremus sprinkles so many New-Wave flourishes on the proceedings you may think you’re watching art—or possibly a Levi’s commercial made by somebody who’s really mastered that Final Cut Pro transition function. A rapid pictorial montage shows two months of bird’s eye bedroom spooning. Match cuts, time elapse sequences, Indie pop-rock piano notes, and relentless scenes of slightly overexposed youths striking poses make up the panoply for a film so low-key it’s somnambulating. Best Actress Academy Award nominee Jennifer Lawrence shows up as a blonde, Valley Girl temptress, but I hardly noticed. There’s less acting here than at an Abercrombie photo shoot. The ultimate message is one about puppy love being all facile romance and real relationships being difficult to maintain—something adults usually understand. But all I saw was a couple of irresponsible children soberly whining about the consequences of their poor decisions. This is kid’s stuff drenched in fashionably pale sunlight. At least if they were vampires they’d mercifully burn up in the UV rays.