FilmSnobReviews

Title: The Last Five Years
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Richard LaGravenese
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Jeremy Jordan, Meg Hudson
Runtime: 1 hr 34 mins

What It Is: When young lovers Cathy and Jamie are married they seem like a picture book romance. But as we can see from the non-linear story of this musical piece there was in fact trouble in paradise. As Jamie’s writing career starts to take off so does his ego. He starts questioning why he’s married, and all this while Cathy struggles to get her acting career off the ground. It’s apparent from the jump that Cathy is “Still Hurting” from Jamie’s betrayal, and now we get to take a journey through the last five years to see what may have extinguished this spark.

What We Think: With a strong start to the musical escapades in the Kendrick solo “Still Hurting” the film does nothing but devolve from that point. None of the other songs really click or leave you memorably humming afterward. In fact the main problem is the narrative gets jumbled and hard to comprehend thanks to the music. Whatever you can make out of the mess is then put through the blender by the non-chronological story device. Jumping from post-relationship to the middle of it really throws you because its not a story that lends itself to that type of structure. Kendrick is charming and good enough, but the material fails her, and Jordan just doesn’t’ keep my interest long enough for me to care. The real disappointment is that I think this could have been a great opportunity to make a little musical. Something that counteracts the bombastic nature normally associated with the genre, instead it’ll fall by the wayside. Forgotten and forgettable.

Our Grade: D, The strength of the opening track stops this from failing. Something of note is that next time you need a cure for ennui  just order this puppy up on VOD and prepare for some Z’s. Kendrick is better than this and given we just reviewed her turn in the much better black comedy The Voices, check out that or her last musical Into the Woods for something much better and interesting.