If you could not tell by my A+ review, I absolutely adored The Last 5 Years. It goes about adapting a tricky piece of material, essentially alternating sung monologues, and lets the score tell the story, making for a very effective piece of work. The material is made all the more powerful by its two central performances by Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan, who both are terrific actors and singers (showing you should still be able to sing well in a movie musical).
The Last Five Years, which will be released February 13, 2015, now has a trailer for you all to watch. I knew this was going to be a tough film to market even before I saw it, and this trailer proves that. The happier stuff in the relationship is, of course, going to be more palatable and sell, but while the film has fun, happy, and funny moments, this is a downer. The trailer never really shows that, aside from the very beginning.
You also do not get a sense of the structure of the film in the trailer, which is very important to how you receive the story. Cathy’s (Kendrick) side of the relationship goes backwards, from breakup to first date, and Jamie’s (Jordan) goes forward. The trailer makes it look like one of those films that starts at the end, jumps to the beginning, and then you catch up. This is not that film at all.
Despite the sort of misleading trailer, I encourage everyone out there to see this film and support composer/book writer Jason Robert Brown and screenwriter/director Richard LaGravenese‘s beautifully honest musical with a terrific score and a duo of tremendous performances.
Again, you can watch the trailer below.
An adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s acclaimed musical, 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.
