Rating of
3/4
Pleasant and Funny
Andrew - wrote on 05/19/12
As someone who generally dislikes romantic comedies, this film was a pleasant surprise. It is often funny and the characters are all easy to relate to. It is not a stereotypical chick flick as a the humor is quite male oriented (it was written by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller).
The Five-Year Engagement is the story of an ordinary couple: Tom Solomon (Jason Segel) is a chef in San Francisco living with his English girlfriend Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt) who has a PhD in psychology. They get engaged and plan their wedding, but the attention shifts Tom's friend Alex (Chris Pratt) and Violet's sister Suzie (Alison Brie) when Suzie announces that she is pregnant, disrupting their wedding plans. When Violet is offered a post-doctoral position at the University of Michigan, Tom gives up his job at a posh San Francisco restaurant and the two move to Ann Arbor. As time goes on, Tom begins to resent Violet for uprooting him and their wedding is postponed several times.
The story is entertaining and the performances are down to earth and believable. Segel and Blunt have good on-screen chemistry. The supporting cast is also quite good, especially Brian Posehn and Chris Parnell who provide many of the laughs. The cinematography is great and there are some fantastic shots of San Francisco and rural Michigan.
A major weakness of the film is its length. At 124 minutes it is a bit long for a romantic comedy and the second half doesn't quite live up to the first. The film gets quite tedious near the end and the ending is very corny. Despite this, The Five-Year Engagement is quite enjoyable overall and has some very funny moments. It is certainly worth watching once, but not multiple times.
