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The Last 5 Years is a musical chronicling a love affair and marriage taking place over a five year period. Jamie Wellerstein (Jordan) is a young, talented up and coming novelist who falls in love with Cathy Hiatt (Kendrick), a struggling actress. Their story is told almost entirely through song. All of Cathy’s songs begin at the end of their marriage and move backwards in time to the beginning of their love affair, while Jamie’s songs start at the beginning of their affair and move forward to the end of their marriage. They meet in the center when Jamie proposes
It doesn't help that the songs, while solid, become repetitive in melody. And there's not a home run in the bunch. I walked out humming ... nothing from this movie.
February 26, 2015
Todd VanDerWerff
LaGravenese doesn't seem to have a particular vision for how to shoot or tell this particular story, so he just aims for the most straightforward method possible most of the time, and that ultimately cripples the film in ways it can't recover from.
[The filmmakers have] crafted a love story so rife with cliché and stereotype that I was completely disinterested in the central break-up of two people I despised.
Kendrick and Jordan seem too squeaky-clean to convey the full weight of the characters' psychological baggage, yet LaGravenese's balanced, unpretentious direction allows the material to resonate all the same.
The unbalanced nature of the adaptation makes for a basically unsatisfying experience (Jamie, a jerk, gets his way with everything, and Cathy, a sweetheart, doesn't), but there are moments of real delight in the movie ...