The Details

Like Crazy

Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones, Jennifer Lawrence

Directed by Drake Doremus

Rated PG-13

Beyond the Weekly

Official Movie Site

IMDb: Like Crazy

Rotten Tomatoes: Like Crazy

Long ago, director Billy Wilder correctly identified the crucial question of any romance as “What keeps them apart?” In the initially charming, ultimately irritating Like Crazy, which inexplicably beat Martha Marcy May Marlene for the top prize at Sundance 2011, what keeps Anna (Felicity Jones) and Jacob (Anton Yelchin) apart is sheer idiocy, as Anna, who’s English, deliberately violates her student visa and then can’t get back into the U.S.

Jacob, for his part, isn’t willing to pass up on business opportunities in LA, so the two spend several years in an on-and-off long-distance relationship that’s clearly unsustainable. Jones and Yelchin are both winning screen presences (if not yet great actors), but their brief connection never seems remotely impassioned enough to merit all this hand-wringing, and director/co-writer Drake Doremus uses an arty, fragmented editing scheme to cannily skip past all the practical questions that the visa issue would raise.