The Five Year Engagement

Director: Nicholas Stoller

Stars: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Chris Pratt

Rated: M

Jason Segel and Emily Blunt have been hard to fault of late.

Between them they’ve been involved in an amazing amount of top quality films such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Knocked Up, I Love You Man, Devil Wears Prada, Sunshine Cleaning and The Adjustment Bureau.

Basically, they’re like gold, but The Five-Year Engagement, seems likely to tarnish their winning streak.

Tom (Jason Segel) and Violet (Emily Blunt) were meant for each other. Love at first site at a New Year’s Eve party, leads to the couple’s quick courtship and a proposal one year later.

But, like any new relationship, after the honeymoon phase is over, life keeps throwing a spanner in the works, upending their whirlwind relationship and potentially their trip down the aisle.

The Five-Year Engagement is one of those films that is everywhere at the moment – press ads, billboards, TV and radio interviews – you really can’t escape it. It’s like some weird subliminal message that compels you to see the film, because all this hype can’t be for nothing, right? Wrong.

This story is average, it’s not terrible, but it’s certainly not great either. Although Segel and Blunt’s performances are both amiable, the source material lets them down.

If you wade through the romantic sweetness, the one liners and the eccentric characters that are dotted throughout this film, you’re left with a dragging plot that’s obvious from start to finish and feels a lot longer than its 2 hour running time.

This film starts out with the potential to be unique and interesting, as it explores the inner workings of a relationship, where a couple put the career of one person first, before each other, but this just ends up as the same old formulaic Hollywood romantic movie, where everything is nice and neatly rounded off in the end, like all fairy tale romances.

Don’t get me wrong, this is an enjoyable film, you won’t necessarily have wasted your time going to see it, but it really isn’t anything too special. It has some great quirky characters, butit’s just a shame that the uniqueness of each character didn’t exactly fit together to make a genuinely good all rounded film.

The big laughs definitely go to bit players Lauren Weedman (Chef Sally), the always brilliant Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation’s Andy) as Alex, and Chris Parnell (30 Rocks Dr. Leo Spaceman), these three alone are worth the watch.

But hey, I love a trashy Hollywood movie that ends nice and neatly every now and then, just like everyone else, I guess with The Five-Year Engagement though, I was just expecting a little more.

#movie #moviereview #filmreview #film #thefiveyearengagement #jasonsegal #emilyblunt

– Suzanna Parisi

Originally published in DB Magazine #Issue544 (street mag no longer exists - link no longer available)