‘Last Five Years’ shows off Kendrick’s skills

The young actress continually shines with musicals.

It wouldn’t be a bad thing if “Pitch Perfect” Anna Kendrick spent the rest of her film career doing nothing but musicals. Her pleasant, Broadwaypolished alto was right at home with Sondheim in “Into the Woods,” had a pop star sheen for “Pitch Perfect” and is given its best showcase yet in “The Last Five Years,” a romantic musical about the ups and downs of two young lovers struggling to stay together as they pursue artistic careers in Manhattan.

No, it’s not deep. But the film, a sung-through (virtually no dialogue) musical by Jason Robert Brown, is sweet and sun- ny and occasionally funny. And it’s sad and pitiful in equal measure, with Kendrick and co-star Jeremy Jordan (TV’s “Smash”) bringing passion and pain to Brown’s tunes in the New York settings where Richard Lagravenese parks his camera.

We meet Kathy, a woman emptied out by grief.

“Jamie is over and where can I turn?” she sings. “Covered in scars I did nothing to earn.”

A five-year relationship seems at an end. Over the course of 94 minutes, their story skips back and forth through time, from passionate make-out moments, to career interludes, from painful cheating to giddy pre-marital bliss.

Kendrick and Jordan make us forget they’re singing and engage with their acting, which is all you want from most musicals.

The tunes are fairly generic, in the modern Broadway idiom (the stage show only made it to offBroadway). But Lagravenese (“P.S. I Love You”) gets laughs and romantic anticipation out of Kathy’s backstage showstopper.

The brisk production makes these “Five Years” pass quickly, and Kendrick, with able support from Jordan, makes one long for her to get a shot at other intimate romantic musicals on the big screen.