The Five-Year Engagement

Starring: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Chris Pratt, Alison Brie, David Paymer, Jacki Weaver, Rhys Ifans, Mindy Kaling, Randall Park, Kevin Hart, Molly Shannon, Chris Parnell
Directed by: Nicholas Stoller
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy, Romance
2012

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A couple (Jason Segel, Emily Blunt) get engaged, but face a series of challenges that causes them to continually delay their wedding.

Review:

Tim: I love Jason Segel, and since he stars in and wrote this movie, I wanted to love it. Unfortunately, the film is a bit of a mess. There's some brilliant ideas in this film, but the movie as a whole never lives up to its potential. It was very often boring, awkward, and depressing. In the end, I'd consider it an okay movie, but this is not a win by any stretch. I was very disappointed with The Five-Year Engagement.

What's disappointing is that the film starts out showing so much potential. The beginning of the film was quite strong- Jason Segel and Emily Blunt make a fun couple, and it was entertaining getting to know these characters and the friends and family around them. At a certain point, our protagonists move to Michigan, and the whole movie starts to fall apart (as an Ohio State fan, it's not surprising that Michigan ruins something). The film had a head of steam, but just wallows through the Michigan scenes. The middle of the film is boring and depressing, and it's just not very funny at all. At 124 minutes, this movie is way, way too long- and it's the middle of the film that sinks the whole picture. The story does pick back up towards the end (not surprisingly, as it moves back to San Francisco), and it ends in fairly decent fashion. The middle was just really, really bad.

The cast is mostly good. Jason Segel is someone I always enjoy, and he was fun in this role. Emily Blunt is fairly strong, although I felt like there were a number of scenes where her performance felt forced and unnatural. It was especially obvious in some of the scenes where she is laughing. Segel and Blunt work fairly well together. While they did not have as much chemistry as I would have liked, they were fun to watch together.

I really don't like Chris Pratt, but I suppose he was pretty funny here. I do really like Alison Brie, but her British accent just through off her performance. Besides the Elmo scene (which was hilarious!), I just didn't care for her very much here. Rhys Ifans was a nice addition to the cast. Mindy Kaling was fine. I always like seeing David Paymer and Jacki Weaver was an unexpected but nice addition. The cast as a whole was quite good.

This movie was unfortunately, not as funny as it needed to be. Sure, there were some terrific scenes here and there, but there wasn't anything consistently funny about the film. For every Elmo/Cookie Monster scene, there's a dozen where the jokes just fall flat. I wanted to mention the scene where Segel wants to be "alone" but doesn't want Blunt to leave- it's a particularly powerful, funny, and emotional scene- it was one of the best of the film. Unfortunately, there's just too many scenes that fell far below that bar. The movie was quite uneven.

This movie suffers some because it's way, way too long. A movie like this should top out at 105-110 minutes. I love long movies if there is enough meat and story to sustain it. The extra minutes here were unnecessary, and it just felt like a real chore to make it through this film. The middle of the movie just drags and drags in certain places, and it wasn't very enjoyable to watch long stretches of this film.

The Five-Year Engagement does do a lot right, but the film's shortcomings are just too much to overcome. I'd consider this a very average movie. That pains me because I love Jason Segel and want him to have a successful film career, but he simply has to do better than this.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



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