Three out of Five stars
Running time: 90 mins

Engaging romantic drama with some effective directorial touches and a terrific pair of performances from Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin, but there's the occasional naggingly absent detail and the script is prone to some embarrassingly heavy-handed symbolism.

What's it all about?
Co-written and directed by Drake Doremus, Like Crazy stars Felicity Jones as Anna, a British student studying in Los Angeles, who starts dating Jacob (Anton Yelchin), an American student who's starting up a furniture making business. The pair fall madly in love and Anna decides to deliberately out stay her visa in order to spend the summer with Jacob, only to be refused entry back into the States after flying home for her sister's wedding.

Faced with seemingly insurmountable levels of bureaucracy from US immigration, the pair attempt to conduct a long-distance relationship while also getting on with their careers. After an argument during one of Jacob's visits to London, they break up and eventually find new partners (Charlie Bewley as Anna's neighbour Simon and Jennifer Lawrence as Jacob's work-mate Samantha) but they both find that they can't quite let go of their connection to each other.

The Good
Felicity Jones continues to show why she's one of our most exciting rising stars with yet another wonderful performance as Anna – warm-hearted and vulnerable, it's a stunningly naturalistic performance that seems completely real and believable. Yelchin is equally good and the pair generate genuine chemistry together, while there's strong support from both Jennifer Lawrence (who works wonders with a disappointingly underwritten part) and from Alex Kingston and Oliver Muirhead as Anna's parents.

Doremus orchestrates some lovely sequences (e.g. their utterly charming first date) and there are some effective directorial touches, such as a nice moment where they're separated by a window frame or a nicely shot time-passing montage of them both asleep in the same bed. Similarly, the script takes a much more realistic view of long distance relationships than, say, Going the Distance and will strike a painful chord with anyone who's ever been in a similar situation.

The Bad
That said, there's the occasional naggingly absent detail that rather undoes the film's efforts towards realism – for one thing, Anna and Jacob seem to exist in a world where they both have iPhones but neither of them have heard of Skype or internet messaging. Similarly, the film is prone to some embarrassingly heavy handed symbolism, like Anna's “Patience” bracelet breaking or the fate of the chair Jacob makes for her (with “Like Crazy” carved into it).

Worth seeing?
Like Crazy is an engaging romantic drama that's worth seeing for yet another terrific performance from rising British star Felicity Jones.