The intermittently uplifting yet often pretentious The Last Five Years contains hardly any dialogue that is not sung. Pleasantly containing several songs of depth and wit, the film struggles with the thinnest of story lines and its pleased-with-itself structure. Anna Kendrick, who is very good, presents her character, Cathy’s story backwards from the end, while Jeremy Jordan, only fair as Jamie, goes along in a standard front to back arc. (They meet in the middle for their wedding, the film’s only actual duet. The chronological device is more cute than terribly effective and as good as some of the songs are, they fail to overcome the natural obstacle of converting a basically two-person theater construction into a breathing film. Still, it’s fun to watch Kendrick get silly in “A Summer in Ohio,” a tune that sends up her plight as a struggling actress forced to do summer stock. Although Jordan is much less convincing as a hotshot novelist, Valentine’s Day filmgoers could do a lot worse than this. Slated to open then, the popular off-Broadway production by composer-lyricist Jason Robert Brown should both get a wider audience and significantly boost the rising career of Kendrick, who has been gradually rising up to star status.
(3.5 out of 5 stars).