Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Alannah Purslow I genuinely do not know what I think of this film. I am not sure whether to like it or not. I think that the songs are good. I have seen clips from the stage show and I do admire the Jason Robert Brown score however I just wasn't a fan of the particular outline/plot of the movie. I surprised myself. I usually like the starts with a song, ends with a song format, but this film didn't make me go 'wow'. I thought that the set and costume designs were good and lifted and dampened the mood when necessary, but I just feel that there is something about this movie which I have either haven't figured out yet or maybe just haven't watched enough times to fully appreciate.Overall, I'm on the fence.

TxMike I have seen Anna Kendrick in several movies and I actually like her. But to my ear she is terribly miscast here as Cathy Hiatt if the intent was to have a really good singer. On the other hand if she was cast to mirror her character, i.e. a singer who never gets past the auditions, then perhaps she was perfectly cast. Still her full singing voice has a very annoying quality to it and I simply had to turn the volume way down in my home theater during her solo songs, that is how annoying I found her voice. She plays a young aspiring stage actress from Ohio who meets a young aspiring writer in New York. They fall in love, they get married, but they are going in opposite directions. he is becoming successful, she cannot get past the auditions. She becomes bitter, he tries to cheer her up, they argue, their 5 years together were interesting but not lasting.Corpus Christi native Jeremy Jordan is quite a revelation as Jamie Wellerstein, her lover and husband. His acting and singing were both very good and very appropriate. While there are a few other characters these are the only two who sing and really the only two who matter.

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.

Argemaluco It was very pleasant to find a fresh, energetic and lacking of pretensions musical after having suffered the deplorable Into the Woods some months ago. The Last Five Years isn't such a famous play, maybe due to the fact that it's relatively new and was released "off-Broadway", but its transition to cinema worked brilliantly, thanks to its ingenious structure, picturesque New Yorkers locations and pleasant songs which were sang by Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan with a deep feeling and contagious enthusiasm. Jordan plays Jaime, a young writer who found unexpected success with his first book; and Kendrick plays Cathy, an aspiring actress who is tired of being rejected in her search of the "big break". That duality of points of view allows an interesting dissection of the romance, exploring the causes of its dissolution without exaggerating the situations or forcing the drama... something which marks the difference between The Last Five Years and typical Broadway musicals, in which everything is bombastic and apparatus. Having said that, there are other significant differences: to start with, the screenplay of The Last Five Years is fascinating even without the songs. Its romantic story is honest and credible, attaching itself to the classic formula, but avoiding the clichés which sabotage the tales of this kind (either in cinema, theatre or literature). At the same time, the parallel chronologies create a sensation of novelty and even suspense over the unavoidable obstacles in the relationship between Jamie and Cathy, offering us a new perspective over their initial passion, the different levels of maturation in the couple and the external and internal factors which contribute to the cooling of the affection. And then, we have the nature itself of the songs. Instead of "sung dialogs" (such as in the previously mentioned Into the Woods), The Last Five Years employs well defined songs with the adequate rhythm and metrics for their situation and message. In conclusion, I liked The Last Five Years very much, and I recommend it as an excellent example of what musical cinema can achieve when it puts the same attention on characters and story, instead of exclusively focusing into "shwomanship" which obstructs the most basic narrative function. In other words, life should be recognizable as such even when songs come out of nowhere.