The Last Five Years (2015)

Wow! Such a good movie.

ridiculous rating

The first must-see film of the year.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I would like to start this off by saying that I have never even heard of this musical before the movie, thus I have never seen the Broadway production. This review is only based on the movie. I was aware of this movie after the soundtrack was suggested on my spotify and I loved it. I watched the movie hoping that I would be able to understand the songs more. This movie has wonderful music and the songs are addictive. I thought the chemistry between both characters was very good. However, individually, I liked the leads unevenly. Anna Kendrick as the female lead was lovely to watch and I believe her voice is very nice. However, Jeremy Jordan's male lead, Jamie (yes I know, lots of J's), was much less likable. His voice was lovely but because I didn't care for his character made me not want to listen to his songs. I know that this is an indie darling in the Broadway community, but, as an outsider, I thought /,because of this dislike of one of the leads, the movie's story was lacking. I probably won't watch the movie multiple times but i will get the soundtrack so I can listen to it all the time.

I'm giving this a 10 to try to counteract the ratings of most of these reviews. It isn't a standalone movie, and shouldn't be rated as such. It is an adaptation of the stage production almost exactly, and a pretty passable one at that: pretty cinematography, decent performances, and a good reading of the source material. Jeremy's voice is great for the part, and Anna Kendrick is...okay. My actual rating is more like an 8 (because the stage productions I have seen have been more moving, and this one does kind of make it good vs. bad, as opposed to two flawed people breaking). It is a weird film, yes, but not a bad stage production.

I went to see The Last Five Years after watching most of Anna Kendrick's work in a short amount of time, and as an admirer of her work, it was just not enough for me. The Last Five Years was exactly what I wanted Kendrick to be thrown in, and her performance just blew my mind. It explores a lot of characters emotion, and Kendrick is always in the edge of it, we can see her clearly passing through all this emotions written on her face because it is always intense. The actress is the highlight of the movie and she is so good she brings up one of the movie flaws: Jeremy Jordan's performance,even though being good,it was not good enough and he was shadowed by Kendrick and, because of that, it's easily to sympathize with her character rather than Jeremy's one. I simply adore the movie, and even though I found myself slightly lost and confused at some point I love the time concept of how it is told, I love the songs and I love the visual of it and how the colors change light to dark and dark to light. It is not a movie for everyone but I would definitely recommend it. It is a sweet, yet heartbreaking, story easy to relate with.

Having seen an amazing production of this in Auckland (Last Tapes Theatre Company), this much more expensive, full blown movie fell flat for me. I think Jason Robert Brown's musical was ultimately misunderstood here.The structure in the original is that they sing solo, him starting at the start, her at the end, they meet in the middle when they get married and share their only duet, and then spin off into solo again. Although "together", each is alone inside his/her own emotions, and although trying to connect, they constantly miss each other. Only when they are getting married and singing a duet are they really in sync. The movie muddled this by trying to have both him and her taking part in every song throughout. An acting challenge that failed :/ The best moments were when they were singing to no one in particular, for her it was "Jamie is over and Jamie is done" and for him "Hold on, the panic recedes". This was when the actors were finally allowed to perform the songs the way they were supposed to be performed.Basically, I thing the focus of each song is supposed to be on the subjective experience. But the movie missed this point, and tried to make every song mimic a real life conversation. This failed, although you could see how hard both actors were trying. The chemistry was very forced. Singing a conversation is awkward enough, but the lyrics are so deep and vulnerable, no one would say those things aloud. It was especially awkward when they were sung at his friends in a bar or at reporters at a party. Those poor extras on the receiving end of the songs didn't know what to do with themselves. The songs are meant to be confidante confessions to the audience, coming from deep within the characters, obviously not casual conversation. In general, the misunderstanding of the unique genre and structure of the original transformed The Last Five Years into a cringey, low-level musical. The original is actually more a song cycle, it has virtually no spoken dialogue, like an opera. And it creates the same height of emotion as opera does. Performed, even if the director lacks creativity to make it come alive believably, it should at least not distract us from the amazing poetry in the lyrics. But there was a lot of (really crappy) dialogue inserted, a lot of unnecessary shots of miscellaneous stuff that was really distracting during the singing. Instead of an incredibly powerful set of insights into how relationships dissolve, this was just another Hollywoody movie about guy meets girl. And what's sad is now the majority will think that that's what The Last Five Years is. But it's actually so much more than that! Having said that, no matter how badly adapted, I don't think The Last Five Years could ever suck, the score and text is just too amazing and this will shine through. And despite awkwardness, there were some really good moments from both him and her. I would recommend listening to the songs rather than watching this movie though, or better still, try and see it live.