The Last Five Years

An utterly miserable, dribbling, pile of crap without a single drop of entertainment or a single line of song that is tolerable. Both the main characters are so ungodly self centered and anger inducing that the hate I have for this movie exceeds my hate for genocide or rape murderers or even people who chew loudly. The only reason I watched this was at the insistence of a 14 year old girl, but I protested, god damn it. I didn't give in without a fight!

A musical in which every song is a run on sentence, a romantic drama that fails to create a compelling or unique reason for our couple to split, and a film that doesn't seem to understand that stage and screen are far from interchangeable, "The Last Five Years" is totally baffling, and cinematically inept, in every way imaginable.

Not often I stop watching a movie 10 mins in, but there was NO dialog, only singing. I love you anna Kendrick but not enough to listen to 90 mins of theatrical singing.MN

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg it is not.

I just couldn't get into it. They are both great at singing but the songs were quite bad.

More like The Last (Five) Years of Summer. The direction is mediocre. It plainly alternates between generic New York apartment/cityscape scenes and generic Ohio scenes. And it fails to capitalize on a somewhat interesting concept of the couple's love for the other going in opposite directions. Kendrick's singing single-handedly keeps the movie afloat and is worth one listen, but the film itself is largely forgettable.

I love Kendrick, but I really hate this.

W4E1P2S1V1M2A2R3. Entirely biased because I already loved the musical, and I'd probably rather listen to the original cast soundtrack than watch this movie, but it was still great. Kinda like Johnny Depp's Secret Window--just a boring, unadulterated hour and a half of watching great actors doing their thing up close.

I came to this as a fan of the show, which perhaps helped me more than it would other viewers. Anna Kendrick is far and away the best part of this show. Her performance shines.

Great performances and fine direction in a film that should never have been a film, as the source material is so theatrical, and that issue is never addressed.

It's a mildly affecting but rather awkward and pretty unremarkable musical film adaptation that should have stayed a musical. But Anna Kendrick is so phenomenal that it makes you wish she could get more roles that would diversify her filmography instead of getting typecast.

As a huge fan of the original musical (one of my favorites), I have minor quibbles with the staging and direction - it's not nearly as imaginative as many of the low-budget community theater renditions I've seen. Nonetheless, Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan are so freaking good in these roles that most of my complaints about the unimaginative translation to the screen barely matter at all by the end. This isn't gonna win any awards, but color me impressed, anyway.

The Last Five Years brings a stage musical and properly translates it to film. It takes a mediocre story with shallow characters and uses an innovate style to transform the story into much more than it would be if it was told generically. Mix in strong performances and wonderful songs, and you've got a film worth watching. It doesn't feel like it was meant for the stage, which is a feeling lots of these types of things have. If you're a fan of musicals, The Last Five Years is something to see.

Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan are a perfect combination to have sell this movie, and with the compelling approaches that The Last Five Years takes, it's a movie-musical that does justice to the source material. [Full review]