There were some great moments and ideas here...but I just kept thinking,"This would have been better on stage." Plus, it was a film filled with decent melodies but no show stopper. Not a bad metaphor.

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.

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.

I hate to be harsh, really, but I love to be sincere.Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan are both great, really, and the film is good… nevertheless, unfortunately, it results hard to like and I am afraid that the reason is the music. As in the purest Opera tradition, this musical is a non-stop singing drama. Melodies, however, are not catching and that's where and why (on my humble opinion) it flops.Without disturbing the masters (Mozart, Verdi… or even Berg), it should be recalled that even Operettas' Authors like Lehar or Leoncavallo built their fortunes on easy to recall, enjoyable tunes. And that writing both the Musical score and the Libretto (as Wagner, most notably, did) usually leads to heavier results.