dananielsen-00085 The sounds of New York City fill the air as a charming, cream apartment building appears on the screen and the title The Last Five Years is displayed. The words fade along with the city's din and is replaced by the soft touch of a piano. The camera pans up the building until focusing on one particular room. Inside sits Cathy (Anna Kendrick) staring emptily at a letter, hurt clearly etched across her face. This is where the story begins, or rather should I say Cathy and Jamie's (Jeremy Jordan) story ends. The Last Five Years, based on the off-Broadway musical, takes us through the relationship of Cathy, a struggling actress, and Jamie, a rising star in the world of literature, and how they go from a creative power couple to a broken marriage. The Last Five Years is brilliantly and beautifully translated onto screen due to the unique way the story is told with the assistance of lighting and music.Director Richard LaGravenese follows the clever narrative of the play in which Cathy and Jamie tell the story from each of their perspectives almost exclusively in song. What makes the narrative so clever though, is that their sides of the story are told in opposite directions. Cathy works backwards beginning from the failure of their marriage and ending at the start of their love affair. Meanwhile, Jamie tells the story from the start of their relationship and ends with writing the letter that explains he has left. There may be some initial confusion while watching the film, but LaGravenese does his best to add hints of where the two are at in their relationship.One hint is the crafty use of lighting throughout the film. It can be observed that during the rough patches of Cathy and Jamie's relationship, grays and other dark tones are used to emphasize the gloomy, hard times. Then the cinematic color design does a complete one-eighty and vibrant colors are thrown onto the screen. The brightness of the colors reflects their blissful relationship which is flying too close to the sun and the inevitability of being burned is practically tangible. The scene when Cathy and Jamie take a Sunday Drive paints the radiance of their relationship perfectly and is only enhanced with Cathy's upbeat song.Like any musical, songs play an important role in storytelling and the music and lyrics of The Last Five Years, composed by Jason Robert Brown, are no exception. The film begins with the sweet and sad ballad "Still Hurting" flawlessly delivered by Kendrick and ends with the strong, heartwarming yet heartbreaking duet "Goodbye Until Tomorrow / I Could Never Rescue You" performed by Kendrick and Jordan. The rest of the film is filled with a variety of songs, ranging from the haunting "If I Didn't Believe in You," to the comical "A Summer in Ohio," and the fun-loving "I Can Do Better Than That." The tunes are catchy and the lyrics are witty that a movie-goer is guaranteed to have at least one song from the soundtrack stuck in their head for days, especially if they are a musical fanatic. On top of it all, the voices of Kendrick and Jordan are wonderful and mesh so well together during harmonies that the on screen chemistry between the two almost seems real. The music, cinematics, and screenplay are just a few of the many factors that assist in the eloquent translation of The Last Five Years from an off-Broadway musical to the big screen. The combination of these aspects and others take a viewer on the five-year roller-coaster that is Cathy and Jamie's relationship. The back-and-forths, ups and downs, and loop de loops are certain to leave viewers with a case of emotional whiplash as they exit the theater.

Reno Rangan Recently I saw a couple of other films starring Anne Kendrick, I was not very impressed with them and so I got the same result for this one as well, even worse. I don't like musicals, especially not the modern ones, well, mostly. This is a short story that comes around 30 minutes, but with those nonsense songs, it became a feature film. Seems a few people liked it, I think they had a reason, but to me it was very boring.There was no any decent performances, all I saw was the film characters singing facing in one direction. Maybe they were looking at the lyrics board. I suggest don't go for it seeking a normal romance-comedy. If you like the musical, you might enjoy it, other than that, I don't see this would satisfy any average guy. So no offense for those who liked it, but this is totally a skippable film the year.3/10

Peter Schmid This might be the best Movie adaption of a Musical I've seen so far, it was utterly brilliant. I was a little sceptical at first because in its stage version it's a concept musical and I was excited to see how it'll work as a movie, and I gotta admit that it works even better that way. Jeremy Jordan and Anna Kendrik make a great cast and harmonize very well together, and let's be honest nothing beats Jeremy's voice. He could sind the telephone book and it would be a success. I applaud the producers who took a risk doing this. Beautiful cinematography and great mixing of the music, the band played very tight and was conducted by the master and composer himself, Mr. Jason Robert Brown.

Gordon-11 This film tells the story of an actress and her novelist husband, chronicling their encounter, marriage and divorce.I didn't know "The Last Five Years" is a musical, so I was quite baffled by the initial scene of Anna Kendrick singing for a full five minutes. Then, I get to enjoy many beautiful songs and lovely scenery. Colours are lush, even the trees look very saturated with striking green. It's a beautiful film to watch, but I think there's little emphasis on the plot. There's very little build up of the plot, and the story does not flow to the following segment because every song is just so long. There's just not enough time to fit five years into ninety minutes, especially when every song is at least five minutes long. On the whole, "The Last Five Years" is a nice film, but I will forget about it on a few months.