Film / The Last Five Years

"Will you share your life with me (forever)
For the next ten lifetimes? (forever, Jamie)
For a million summers
Till the world explodes
Till there's no one left
Who has ever known us apart..."

— "The Next Ten Minutes"

The Film of the Play The Last Five Years, directed by Richard Lagravenese.

Like the musical, the film chronicles a couple, aspiring actress Cathy (Anna Kendrick) and successful writer Jamie (Jeremy Jordan). Cathy's retelling begins after their relationship has ended and goes backward in time, while Jamie's recollection starts at the beginning and moves forward in time. Through alternating song numbers, the audience gets a picture of their relationship over, well, five years.

Unlike the play, which usually has only Cathy or Jamie onstage at one time (except for their wedding), the film shows the other person (and even other minor characters) while the musical numbers go on.

The film was released on February 13, 2015.

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Tropes:

• Adaptation Expansion: The film adds a couple dances (a diegetic one in "A Summer in Ohio" and a… less-diegetic one in "Moving Too Fast"), and some direct interaction between the characters during most songs. It also gives some throwaway dialogue to Elise, Jamie's editor, when he first meets her at the end of "Moving Too Fast". It also explicitly positions Elise as the person Jamie first cheats with, a decision that offended purists who preferred the Noodle Incident presented by the stage show.
• Auto Erotica: The movie shows Cathy and Jamie getting handsy in a car during "I Can Do Better Than That." For added amusement, it includes the lines, "You, and you, and nothing but you… Fresh, undiluted and pure, top of the line, and totally mine!"
• Bowdlerize: To satisfy the MPAA, the film version does away with a fair bit of swearing, resulting in a Precision F-Strike where there used to be quite a few more of them. The movie's soundtrack re-adds at least one F-bomb but leaves the rest of it as is.
• The Cameo: Jeremy Jordan's real-life wife, Ashley Spencer, appears at the end of "A Miracle Would Happen" as the receptionist in undergarments. (It Makes Sense in Context.)
• Compliment Backfire: Cathy has some extra lines of dialogue in "The Schmuel Song," a song intended to lift her spirits, including, "Wait, I'm Schmuel in this story?" By the end of the song, though, she's visibly touched.
• Creator Cameo: The play's original playwright Jason Robert Brown shows up during the rambling audition in "Climbing Uphill" as the pianist who can't keep up with Cathy's sheet music.
• Gaslighting: In "See I'm Smiling" he responds to Cathy's (accurate) accusations of cheating by calling her "crazy".
• Heroic BSoD: The film opens on "Still Hurting", showing Cathy sitting around the house in a depressed stupor, before finally pulling herself together enough to remove her wedding ring, and the watch Jamie gave her.
• Mood Lighting: The color is more vibrant during the happier/beginning parts of Jamie and Cathy's relationship, and the light gets duller when their relationship is falling apart, and eventually the light completely drains when their relationship ends. The same happens with their clothes. The happier they are in their relationship, the clothes are more vibrant and colorful, while at the end of their relationship their clothes are more dull and grey.
• The Oner: Kendrick and Jordan are both Tony-nominated Broadway actors, and the film gets the most of them.
  • "Still Hurting" is only five shots, two short ones at either end and three stitched together using wipes so that they appear to be a seamless whole.
  • "If I Didn't Believe in You" is one five-minute take all the way through. It's Jordan's song, with Anna Kendrick contributing solely by body language and Facial Dialogue.
  • "Nobody Needs To Know" is three shots over the course of a six-and-a-half-minute song.
• Remake Cameo: Besides the Creator Cameo listed below, the film adaptation has a couple of other notable cameos, both uncredited:
  • Betsy Wolfe, who played Cathy in the 2013 Off-Broadway revival at Second Stage, appears during "A Summer in Ohio" as Cathy's roommate, the "former stripper and her snake, Wayne."
  • Sherie Rene Scott, the original Cathy, appears as a casting director at one of Cathy's auditions, alongside her husband, Kurt Deutsch.
• Setting Update: The film changes a few lyrics to make it clear that the show is set in the 2010s instead of the 2000s —for example, Cathy sings "well-placed tattoos" instead of "looked like Tom Cruise" to describe an attractive guy (although this change was previously implemented in the 2013 off-Broadway revival, when Cruise was no longer considered the standard for "hotness") and "these are the people who cast Russell Crowe in a musical" as opposed to "Linda Blair" to describe her frustrations with the theater industry. And she has to find Jamie's book in "a Target in Kentucky," since there are no longer any Borders open there (or, indeed, anywhere).
• Twirl of Love: Jamie picks Cathy up, slings her over his shoulder, and spins her around during "The Schmuel Song."