Movie Review: The Five-Year Engagement
The Five-Year Engagement has all the stuff great romantic comedies are made of. It sports a superb cast and side-splitting consistent laughs through-out, with plenty of memorable one-liners that will keep you smiling for days after. The unforeseen chemistry between the two main love interests really does work baring the practicality of them fitting together being so seemingly mismatched.
The film begins with Tom Solomon (Jason Segel) proposing to his girlfriend, the beautiful Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt). The hoots start right away as one thing after another goes amiss. The family’s throw an engagement party for the couple, Tom’s best friend, Alex (Chris Pratt), ends up sleeping with Violet’s maid of honor and sister Suzie (Alison Brie). This unlikely couple end up getting pregnant and a shot-gun wedding is performed.
Tom, an upcoming sous chef in San Francisco, leaves his promising career to move to Michigan with his fiancé as she attends the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Unable to find a job as a chef, he ends up working at the famous Zingerman’s deli making sandwiches, keeping a good attitude even when his best friend Alex get’s the head chef position Tom should have had. The years go on and you watch the slow transformation (or, demise) of the once confident chef decline. He grows a horrible beard and takes up hunting. Meanwhile Violet is blooming in her internship, and a crush is developed with her older professor. As her time at the university is increased, Tom begins to lose it. They try to plan the marriage again and again, but there is always something that happens to delay or postpone the nuptials.
Jason Segel in “The Five-Year Engagement.” © 2012 – Universal Pictures.
At their second engagement party all hell breaks loose, Tom ends up in a precarious position with one of his co-workers, and tries to kick the ass of Violet’s professor learning that he kissed his fiancé. This is an extremely funny scene. Tom even ends up losing a toe! It may not sound funny, but it is. Inevitably they break up and Tom moves back to San Francisco, starts working under his best buddy Alex, and begins a relationship with the restaurant’s very young hostess. She is way ahead of him when it comes to energy, and it’s all he can do to keep up with her, in and out of the sack. Consequently as you might have guessed, Violet ends up dating her professor. Things just aren’t what they should be and all the relationships are broken off. Tom starts his own mobile taco business that really takes off. Upon learning that one of Violet’s grandparents has died Tom travels to England to attend the funeral. Of course he runs into Violet, and they end up rekindling their relationship. She decides to head back with Tom to visit her sister, and one thing leads to another…. They are back in love, having learned that no relationship is perfect 100% of the time. Ultimately, you are rooting for them to work it out and as you might guess, it does.
Honorable mention has to go to Blunt, her perfect physical comedy is spot on. Also, Chris Pratt is phenomenal as the annoying, sarcastic, and rude best friend. Director Nicholas Stoller leads his audience in the same proficient way he did in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, outside of the film being a tad too long. One can take only so much silly humor and this 124-minute film would have played better at a respectable 90 minutes. All and all, I definitely would see The Five-Year Engagement a second time. Loved it! Be advised though, this film does contain strong language, brief nudity, and sexual inference.
Betsy Cizek
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