Film

The Last Five Years

Name: The Last Five Years
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music, Romance
Released: 2014
Cast: Anna Kendrick, Jeremy Jordan, Natalie Knepp, Bettina Bresnan, Marceline Hugot

A musical about a marriage told backwards and forwards simultaneously. Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan sing their way through love, ambition, and the small fractures that become chasms. It's intimate, occasionally devastating, and entirely sung-through. For anyone who's loved a Stephen Sondheim song or sat with the quiet tragedy of two good people failing each other.

TMDb rating

2.9

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you adore sung-through musicals where the lyrics do the heavy lifting, and you like a small, bittersweet story told with wit and an ache underneath.

Skip it if you need spoken dialogue to get your bearings, or you find a whole film of characters singing to each other a tiring way to spend ninety-odd minutes.

What it asks of you: Close attention, since the two halves run in opposite directions and each song asks you to hold a separate thread. At 94 minutes it stays in one melancholy key.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

tick, tick... BOOM!2021

A one-man musical about an artist's desperation and dreams, starring Andrew Garfield. Like The Last Five Years, it finds profound emotion in the specificity of creative ambition and romantic anxiety. The songs are stunning.

But Relies heavily on you caring about whether the lead gets a Broadway deal. If that world feels distant, the stakes may not land.

Waitress2007

Sara Bareilles sings about a woman trapped between dreams and reality, with sharp humour and genuine tenderness. The same balance of lightness and ache—you're laughing one moment and gutted the next.

But The tone shifts tonally can feel jarring if you're not prepared for comedy nested inside sadness and vice versa.

Original Cast Album: Company1970

Sondheim's masterpiece about commitment, love, and the fear of both. It shares The Last Five Years' ability to make marriage feel like a puzzle no one can quite solve. Intelligent, funny, and quietly devastating.

But Feels very 1970s in structure and has no plot to speak of—it's a series of vignettes. That can feel shapeless if you're expecting narrative momentum.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Last Five Years

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Made in Dagenham2010

Both understand that 'I love you' and 'but I need this' can both be true, and that love cannot resolve that contradiction. The Last Five Years handles it through song; this one through industrial history. Same knot, different language.

Sally Hawkins leads a true story about women fighting for equal pay in 1960s England. Zero songs, but it shares The Last Five Years' DNA: two people (in this case Hawkins and her husband) wanting incompatible things, watching their marriage erode under pressure of competing ambitions. Unsentimental and angry where The Last Five Years is tender.

But It's a British kitchen-sink drama about wage negotiation. If you came for music and romance, this will feel like a betrayal of tone entirely.

Merrily We Roll Along

Also told backwards, also about friendships and ambition falling apart. The Sondheim score is phenomenal, and the reverse chronology creates real emotional impact as you watch happy moments knowing their doom.

But The recent film version is a concert capture rather than a traditional production—minimal sets, lots of standing and singing. If you want spectacle, this isn't it.

La La Land2016

Two artists in love in Los Angeles, watching their dreams pull them in different directions. It has The Last Five Years' bittersweet understanding that love isn't always enough when ambition is in the room.

But The ending divides people sharply. Some find it beautiful; others find it frustrating. There's no neutral response.

Rent2005

An ensemble musical about love, art, and survival in 1990s New York. It shares The Last Five Years' investment in how relationships fracture under real pressure—money, illness, ambition, time.

But The film adaptation is less effective than the stage version. Feels somewhat diluted and occasionally treacly when it should cut harder.

Dogfight1991

A quietly devastating musical about connection between two lonely people. Small, intimate, and scored by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (who would later write The Last Five Years' themes into other work).

But Obscure and frankly not well-executed as a film. The performances and song quality matter more than the direction, which is uneven.