The Last Five Years
Directed by Richard LaGravenese
Opens February 13

Are movie musicals so out of style that even basic rules of composition and choreography are forgotten? Consider the key sequence of The Last Five Years, an adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s beloved all-sung deconstruction of the life and death of a relationship. Cathy, whose story is being told in reverse from the divorce, is getting engaged to Jamie, whose arc is told in sequence from their first night together.

This is the only time the characters are on the same page at the same time, as they otherwise alternate solos in a show that’s as much a concert as a narrative. Director Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You) shoots it in a flashy shot that circles his lovers, but since the camera is handheld instead of on a track, it’s all his operator can do to keep from tipping over. Instead of an emotional crescendo, poor Anna Kendrick gets decapitated by framing.

It’s no surprise Years is a favorite of community theaters, since productions only need two actors and minimal staging. Those factors work against it as a movie, though. Since the actors can’t sing to the camera the way their on-stage equivalents belt to the audience, they now make appearances in each other’s songs. Not only does this rob the central number of its power as the only time their X-shaped timelines intersect, but as they don’t have lyrics they’re forced to mug non-verbal responses.

The film never makes the jumps in time wrenching. There should be a certain amount of whiplash between happiness and despair, a foreboding as outlooks get simultaneously brighter and darker while recurring musical themes reveal deeper ironies.

Kendrick does make for a radiant Cathy, her dreams of stardom both plausible and plausibly out of reach. But while Jeremy Jordan would be one of Hollywood’s biggest stars if it still had room for Gene Kelly types, he’s woefully miscast here. Jamie should be awkward and unsteady, first amazed to be with a “Shiksa goddess,” then rocked by the acclaim and temptations that come with his own artistic successes. Jordan, with his strong jaw and rock-hard abs, is the kind of conventional leading man that Jamie expressly isn’t.

He’s a lovely singer, though. The soundtrack should be dynamite.