The Five-Year Engagement: Love and Wedding Planning Don't Mix

Jason Segel is a lovable man. From Freaks and Geeks to How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshall to The Muppets, he's the kind of actor who always makes you smile and the person you ceaselessly root for. Emily Blunt is a similarly lovable woman (though that isn't immediately apparent simply because she is British). Therefore, the two of them make a charming couple as Tom and Violet in The Five-Year Engagement. Unfortunately, the movie cannot sustain this charm.

Tom and Violet meet and fall in love in San Francisco, where Tom is a sous-chef and Violet is getting her doctorate in psychology. One year into the relationship, Tom proposes, Violet accepts, and the wedding planning begins in earnest. However, when Violet receives a job offer at the University of Michigan, the supportive Tom agrees to move there for two years and postpone the wedding plans. Sadly, Michigan is not a great place to be a chef, and while Violet's post-doc is going well, Tom is reduced to making sandwiches at a local deli. Although he continues to try to be supportive, Tom is increasingly resentful and miserable about this living situation. When Violet is offered the chance to extend her post-doc and possibly pursue a tenure-track position at the university, things really get serious, and it's not clear that their engagement is going to last.

That above summary doesn't make it very clear that this movie is a comedy. Which is the problem. It is a very funny and effervescent movie at the beginning, but the relationship drama takes its toll in the second act, and the attempts to lighten the tone aren't very successful. The highlight of the film really is its cast. Aside from Segel and Blunt, the supporting cast is stocked with hilarious folk like Chris Pratt, Mindy Kaling, Chris Parnell, and Alison Brie, who offer up irresistible comedy sketches that pepper the movie and prevent it from becoming too angsty. While these moments really liven up the movie and make you laugh (Brie and Blunt having a conversation as Elmo and Cookie Monster might have been my favorite scene), they can't save the film.

The Five-Year Engagement has a great beginning, a sweet ending, but an overwrought middle. I still think it's worth one viewing, simply because of the excellent cast who are clearly having a wonderful time when they get to cut loose and improvise their way through a scene. But like with most romcoms, don't expect a great plot that will revolutionize the way you feel about love and marriage. It's all been done before.