The Five-Year Engagement

It’s ultimately sheer, unreasonable overlength that triggers The Five-Year Engagement‘s lamentable downfall, as the film is simply unable to sustain the viewer’s interest for the duration of its needlessly epic 124 minute running time – which is a shame, certainly, given the promise of its opening half hour and the charisma of its assorted stars. The movie, for the most part, details the ups and downs of the relationship between Jason Segel’s Tom Solomon and Emily Blunt’s Violet Barnes, with the pair’s decision to get married inevitably complicated by a variety of problems and obstacles (Violet’s decision to accept a stint at the University of Michigan, for example, leaves Tom depressed and lonely). Filmmaker Nicholas Stoller, working from a script cowritten with Segel, opens The Five-Year Engagement with a sweet and genuinely romantic sequence detailing Tom’s bungled proposal to Violet, with the scene, which is certainly heightened by Segel and Blunt’s affable work, paving the way for an entertainingly episodic first act that’s rife with amusing cameo appearances and laugh-out-loud hilarious bits of comedy. The increasingly uneven bent of Stoller and Segel’s screenplay is, as such, initially rather easy to overlook, although it’s clear right from the get-go that the scripters have curiously peppered the narrative with a number of palpable pointless interludes (eg Tom’s attempts at hunting with a friendly neighbor). It’s only as the film marches into its laugh-free and incongruously dark midsection (eg Tom becomes a bearded survivalist? Really?) that The Five-Year Engagement begins to morph into a progressively tedious piece of work, with the less-than-engrossing vibe compounded by the third-act introduction of what feels like the longest fake break-up ever committed to celluloid. There’s little doubt that the peppy, thoroughly upbeat finale is subsequently drained of its impact, and it’s finally impossible to label The Five-Year Engagement as yet another in a long line of disappointing, hopelessly sloppy post-Apatow relationship comedies.

** out of ****