This song is fevered, but it's not really sad. Second, because one thread that runs through the show is the way things that seem wonderful about a person at the beginning of a relationship can seem monstrous later, this is the song where Jamie flatly states that any quality she has is fine with him ("If you drove an RV, that wouldn't matter/if you liked to drink blood, I'd think it's cute"). First is that Jamie feels like at first sight, she might be too hot for him, which isn't all that plausible when it comes to Jeremy Jordan, but whatever, welcome to Hollywood. How Sad It Is: While that sounds like (and is) a weird premise, the actual function of the song is to demonstrate three things. When It Happens: You do not have to use your most Sherlockian detective skills to figure out from the title that this song is set early in the relationship and involves Jamie joyfully celebrating the chance to date a girl who isn't Jewish. Here, then, are the 14 songs on the film soundtrack, in reverse order of sadness, with the least devastating at the beginning and the most devastating at the end, because what is this about if not building the devastation? I mean, at times it's also exuberant and joyful, but at its soul, it's really sad. They cross in the middle at their wedding. The way the show is structured, they alternate songs, with hers going backwards in time from the end of the relationship to the beginning and his going beginning to end. They meet, they fall in love, they get married, he becomes hugely successful, she doesn't, they drift, he cheats, and they break up. The plot is this: Jamie is an aspiring novelist and Cathy is an aspiring stage actress. The film is out on DVD and it's streaming on various video on demand providers, and because it's almost devoid of dialogue and made up only of a series of songs, you can always listen to the music if you prefer your turmoil to go into your ear holes only. Earlier this year, it was released as a film starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan, and for the purposes of this piece, we're going to use that production as the point of reference, both because that's how I first got to know the show (though I've listened since to the cast album) and because it's the easily accessible version for those of you who think, "It's been too long since I sobbed uncontrollably into a dishtowel because mere tissues were no match for this story of love found and lost." The Last Five Years, from composer and playwright Jason Robert Brown, began as a stage musical in 2001 in Chicago, then opened as an Off-Broadway production in 2002. But this show and movie sort of spoils itself structurally, so. Jeremy Jordan and Anna Kendrick in The Last Five Years.
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