"The Five Year Engagement" Review by Chris

                Starting out of the gate strong, "The Five Year Engagement" presents Tom (Jason Segel) and Violet (Emily Blunt) as a fun and loving couple who just got engaged after a year of dating. The film makes you part of their lives as you watch all the quirky reactions from their friends and family. Sadly, their wedding is put on hold when Violet is offered the job of a lifetime in a new town. Like their relationship, this is where the movie begins to suffer.

                Tom and Violet quickly go from a couple that's easy to root for to one that you don't know why they're still together. Neither seem happy, even when they're doing their mini comedy acts in every scene. The film stands in its own way by attempting to present itself as a romantic comedy, even when heavy drama makes laughing feel out of place. There are a plethora of extra characters who react more realistically than the main characters. These extras carry the comedy, but take away from the love story, and they don’t stick around, which makes it impossible to attach yourself to them.

                Jason Segel, who co-wrote the film, has proven his ability to write and perform great romantic comedies, but this film doesn't add up to the rest. After you get past the early enjoyable parts of the film, the jokes remain funny, but they don't know when to stop. Long after the audience has stopped laughing and the punch line has passed, the joke just keeps going. The story, on the other hand, will appear only briefly throughout the film. There’s also some jumping forward in time with very little explanation of what took place in the intervening period, and the characters only become more depressing after each leap forward.

                The final twenty minutes of the film conjure back the wit and lovable characters of the beginning, but it's too little, too late. If director Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel had cut down on the drawn out jokes and added to the actual story, this could have been two hours well spent. As it stands, "The Five Year Engagement" feels like it actually takes five years to get through.

                1.5 "Engagement Rings" out of 5

 
Written by Chris
Edited by Aaron