Like Crazy
Metascore
71 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 37 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 29 out of 37
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 37
  3. Negative: 1 out of 37
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  1. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    Nov 3, 2011
    100
    The actors keep their clothes on, but everything else is naked in Like Crazy, a romantic drama that makes other romantic films look obvious and calculated in comparison.
  2. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    Oct 29, 2011
    100
    A semi-improvised, microbudget marvel with a range of feeling that shames most big-budget star-driven movies.
  3. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    Oct 27, 2011
    100
    Doremus' elegant filmmaking is key to the appeal of the film, but it would never work as superbly without the wonderfully natural, believable performances and powerful chemistry of the lead actors.
  4. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    Oct 26, 2011
    91
    Like Crazy tells the truth, simply: Love is thrilling. And - just because of the way life happens - sometimes love hurts.
  5. Variety
    Reviewed by: Andrew Barker
    Oct 22, 2011
    90
    An exquisite, beautifully acted gem of a film, one that should serve as a prelude to bigger things for stars Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin, as well as director Drake Doremus.
  6. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
    Reviewed by: Calvin Wilson
    Nov 11, 2011
    88
    A beautifully realized drama that gets to the essence of what it's like to be young, confused and in love.
  7. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    Oct 27, 2011
    88
    Jones is a marvel. Sundance couldn't get enough of her. You won't, either. Her performance grabs hold and won't let go.
  8. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    Nov 10, 2011
    83
    There's plenty of freshness and skill here, both in front of the camera and behind it.
  9. indieWIRE
    Reviewed by: Eric Kohn
    Oct 22, 2011
    83
    In Sundance terms, Like Crazy qualifies as this year's "Blue Valentine," but it's more observational about the details of a doomed relationship than relentlessly bleak like the aforementioned Derek Cianfrance movie.
  10. Empire
    Reviewed by: Liz Beardsworth
    Jan 30, 2012
    80
    Felicity Jones shines in Drake Doremus' deceptively simple romance, a refreshing take on an age-old dilemma.
  11. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    Nov 3, 2011
    80
    This indie drama starts off as a sexy little date movie, but once the lovers have been separated it grows steadily more complicated and mature.
  12. Time
    Reviewed by: Mary Pols
    Oct 31, 2011
    80
    Like Crazy is a cinematic love potion and you leave it feeling bewitched.
  13. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    Oct 27, 2011
    80
    Like Crazy develops slowly, and threatens at first to be just another movie about beautiful young people in the Age of Fraught Relationships. It's much more than that, though. Without belaboring any issues, it speaks volumes about fear of commitment.
  14. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    Oct 27, 2011
    80
    If you are experienced enough to understand love's fragility but still romantic enough to embrace its power, Like Crazy will put you away.
  15. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: David Fear
    Oct 25, 2011
    80
    Like Crazy proves it's still possible to make a love story that's both genuinely sweet and bittersweet.
  16. Orlando Sentinel
    Reviewed by: Roger Moore
    Nov 16, 2011
    75
    Yelchin doesn't generate the same warmth or passion that Jones does. That is partly by design, as this whole affair was her idea, after all.
  17. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    Nov 3, 2011
    75
    After all, Like Crazy seems to say, haven't we all been there? Didn't it hurt? And wasn't it grand?
  18. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    Nov 3, 2011
    75
    It's entirely possible, maybe even inevitable, that Like Crazy will win over a good many moviegoers despite its bouts of semipreciousness. In the end, I was one of them.
  19. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    Nov 2, 2011
    75
    Like Crazy is a well-made film. The scenes showing Jacob and Anna falling in love have a freshness, and I learn Doremus handed his actors an outline and together they improvised every scene. Some of the whispered endearments under the sheets are delightful.
  20. New York Observer
    Reviewed by: Rex Reed
    Oct 25, 2011
    75
    Unlike most alleged Hollywood rom-coms, Like Crazy is delicate, uplifting and definitely worth investigating.
  21. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    Oct 22, 2011
    75
    Yelchin and Jones are up to the challenge of suggesting much by doing little.
  22. Arizona Republic
    Reviewed by: Bill Goodykoontz
    Nov 10, 2011
    70
    Intense people behave in intense fashion, and that's that. No guns, no bombs, no noises louder than an argument or a father who likes to drink.
  23. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    Oct 24, 2011
    70
    Like Crazy has a lively syntax and could, in an ungrateful mood, be tagged as slick. But Doremus gets the tempos right.
  24. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: John DeFore
    Oct 22, 2011
    70
    Deeply felt first-love tale offers convincing performances and a fine-tuned storytelling sensibility.
  25. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Kimberley Jones
    Nov 9, 2011
    67
    There's no question that the actors and filmmakers have fashioned a compelling (if unformed) love story of a certain age – which is not to be confused for a love story for the ages.
  26. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Alison Willmore
    Oct 26, 2011
    67
    By the film's latter half, we're left not hoping its lovers will find a way to be together, but longing for them to get over each other and move on.
  27. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    Nov 3, 2011
    63
    Although Like Crazy contains some emotionally on-target scenes, the movie as a whole feels glum and artificial. The characters, especially the male lead, are so low key that they're frustrating to watch.
  28. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    Nov 3, 2011
    63
    Like Crazy gets the evanescence of young passion right - the way it ultimately has to burn off, leaving us standing in an unfamiliar adult world. But it never convinces us of the fire itself.
  29. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Sara Stewart
    Oct 28, 2011
    63
    It's sort of like last year's "Blue Valentine" on Prozac -- the giddy highs and the despairing lows are muted, and a well-known side effect of that antidepressant pops up, too: Palpable lust is all but nonexistent.
  30. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    Oct 28, 2011
    60
    The trailer for Like Crazy is one of the best of the year, and I couldn't wait to see the movie that inspired it. Turns out, the film itself plays like one long trailer, a collection of moments and montages that hint at, but never quite achieve, a fully realized whole.
  31. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Connie Ogle
    Nov 17, 2011
    50
    If you're making a movie that purports to be about real love, at the very least, you have to make the audience care whether the lovers work out their problems.
  32. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    Nov 3, 2011
    50
    Keen to be both really romantic and romantically real, the movie is neither, and falls between the cracks of its twin-ambitions. The result? Call it l'amour phooey.
  33. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    Oct 28, 2011
    50
    I really don't understand why anybody thinks the wispy, bittersweet tale of long-distance love in Like Crazy is any big deal. Seriously, I liked this movie better last year, when it had Drew Barrymore in it and was called "Going the Distance."
  34. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    Oct 27, 2011
    50
    Largely a conventional, wan affair, despite its art-cinema flourishes.
  35. Slant Magazine
    Reviewed by: R. Kurt Osenlund
    Oct 27, 2011
    50
    Outside of Felicity Jones's work, the film, directed and co-written by Drake Doremus, usually feels like it's soullessly connecting dots, a far cry from the Before Sunrise-style substance its Yank-meets-Euro chattiness might suggest.
  36. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Nick Pinkerton
    Oct 25, 2011
    50
    The idea is to show love in incidentals rather than big scenes, but the fragments selected do not build to any significance - this is a rote story, arbitrarily scattered into abstraction.
  37. Boxoffice Magazine
    Reviewed by: Ray Greene
    Oct 22, 2011
    30
    A surprising follow-up to Doremus' low-fi but equally concept-driven 2010 Sundance feature "Douchebag," Like Crazy has appealing performances, a notable tone of realism in the acting and so many borrowed mannerisms from better or more interesting films it feels like a YouTube mash-up made by a Wes Anderson junkie who's studying Sophia Coppola movies while writing a term paper on "Garden State."

User Reviews

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User Score
7.2 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 67 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 23
  3. Negative: 2 out of 23
  1. wendy0
    10
    Agreed that Anton Yelchin was excellent in Like Crazy but if you want to see a really breakout performance by him you should watch The Beaver in which he plays Mel Gibson's son. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lBGKKhx2Lo… Full Review »
  2. brettjm18
    5
    Early word from Sundance last January pegged Like Crazy as this years Blue Valentine largely due to its non-conventional and realistic approach at depicting on screen romance. While it's become refreshing to see film work against convention, Like Crazy struggles to maintain a convincing narrative which makes it hard to empathize with these characters. The film isn't without its charm. Felicity Jones shines throughout and is strong enough to recommend on that basis alone. I can't help but feel if the film was at the helm of a different director that it would of translated better on screen and created a stronger emotional impact by its "open-ending" conclusion.… Full Review »
  3. LSUduck
    10
    Many of us dream of that one true love. That perfect match out there in the world. The love that will engulf our soul from the moment we find it and never let go.

    In 'Like Crazy,' we experience that love in the relationship shared by the handsome Jacob (Anton Yelchin) and bright eyed Anna (Felicity Jones). A love that develops in such an intoxicating fashion that the viewer feels as if they were falling head over heels in love themself.

    The young couple meets as college classmates in Los Angeles, living the best years of their lives in the bright California sun. The beautiful couple's journey begins through one of the most romantic forms of courtship, a poem from Anna left on Jacob's windshield, and spins into a whirlwind of unadulterated love. A whirlwind of love that fails to cease until the UK born Anna overstays her student visa, creating an immigration hurdle that becomes difficult to overcome.

    From this moment on, 'Like Crazy' separates itself from the relationship dramas of recent years. This separation comes from director and writer Drake Doremus' choice to draw from personal experiences with love, instead of creating the predictable and expected "fairy tale" love story.

    In the real world, love experiences many hardships like the distance between the couple, the maturity of the couple, and every person's need for affection. Doremus hits on each of these hardships and more, creating a sense of realism unmatched by any relationship drama today. This sense of realism helps create an engrossing attachment to the couple, their story, and the ability for the viewer to relate to the couple's plight.

    A largely ad-libbed script aides that realism. The improvisation allows the couple's dialogue and physical interactions, as well as those with their other lovers while away from each other, to appear as authentic as possible. Through these authentic interactions, Jones and Yelchin develop undeniable chemistry that just further establishes the genuineness of the relationship.

    Through impeccable acting, brilliant directing and an unequaled authenticity, 'Like Crazy' becomes a love story that will live on for generations to come.

    Alex White    … Full Review »
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