“Unconventional Love Story”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Like Crazy has a very simple plot: Girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy back.

Or does she?

You see, complicating this “simple” love story at first glance is something that we all have encountered at one time or another:  bureaucratic red tape, which is more serious in this case because it prevents the girl from getting back into the United States so that she can be reunited with the boy she fell in love with.

Anna is British, Jacob is American, and they meet at a college in Los Angeles where she is studying journalism and he is studying furniture design.

They share a writing class together, and Anna initiates their “meet cute” when she leaves a note to him underneath the windshield wiper of his car in the parking lot.

At the bottom of the note, Anna writes, “P.S. Please don’t think I’m a nutcase.”

So, they get together, discover they have a few things in common, and the first time Anna invites him in for a quiet drink, Jacob remarks that the chair she uses for all her writing is uncomfortable.

Then after we see a series of scenes showing them on numerous dates, having fun, enjoying each other’s company, and obviously falling in love, one day Jacob gives Anna a wooden chair that he designed and built for her, and he shows her that underneath the seat he engraved the words “Like Crazy.”

Well, unfortunately Anna’s student visa is up at the end of the school year, and she is scheduled to go back to England for the summer, but young love prevails, they agree that 2-1/2 months is too long for them to be apart now, and so Anna rashly decides to stay and tells Jacob that they can spend all summer in bed.

However, after Anna does return to England, she gets a job with a magazine, but then when she has a chance to come back to the United States to see Jacob, she is held up in Customs because she had violated her prior visa, and she is immediately sent back to England.

They make half-hearted statements over the telephone to be just friends, but they also both get involved with other people.

Like Crazy is an unconventional love story, and I wasn’t crazy about it.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”