The Five-Year Engagement (2012)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This film tells the story of a couple who gets engaged one year after meeting in a New Year party. After the engagement, life get in the way and they repeatedly postpone their wedding plans, until they drift further apart.The story strangely reminds me of "This is 40". They are basically both films about ordinary people with their ordinary lives. They are both strangely captivating even without much drama or emotional poignancy, as viewers can easily relate to the characters' experiences. "The Five Year Engagement" tells a couple who have troubles that are very familiar to viewers, making them very real life. I see the transformation of Jason Segel and Chris Pratt along the film, and this provides a good contrast between the two characters. Emily Blunt is great as always. What is quite surprising to me is that the younger Dakota Johnson is almost unrecognisable compared to the woman in the "Fifty Shades" series. The ending moved me a lot. It is a strangely touching story even without the traditional touching elements, because it is close to the hearts of viewers.

The Five-Year Engagement (2012): Dir: Nicholas Stoller / Cast: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Chris Pratt, Alison Brie, Mimi Kennedy: Romantic comedy that is low on romance and humour but high on boredom. The point of view is not the problem here. It regards relationships and endurance, which is a test to viewers when it comes to sitting through the whole thing. And what of Nicholas Stoller? He made two great comedies in Get Him to the Greek and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but here he is all over the place. We have the standard boring plot where Jason Segel and Emily Blunt meet, then she gets accepted at some school in Michigan. Segel gives up his head chef job to get a job for far less money. Then we have the predictable spat sprouting from Blunt being lip locked by her professor. We have nearly every elderly in their families die. This is suppose to be a high funny part in this travesty. Every funeral scene is met with laughter as oppose to a groan at its repetitious delivery. We all know how this tripe ends but unfortunately it doesn't end soon enough. Segel and Blunt are terrific together and hold their own within material that is so far beneath them that they might as well be sitting on it. They shine in comparison to the hosts of morons surrounding them. Chris Pratt plays a co-worker of Segel's, and Alison Brie plays Blunt's sister. These two idiots end up together and come off as a complete crap stain within every scene. We can grip the message of relationships and the struggle to maintain them but for crying out loud spare us five-years worth of horrid memories of this theatrical outing. Score: 3 / 10

I think what makes movies, not necessarily great, but really fun to watch is when the characters are really relatable. You can see parts of your life reflected on screen. And when there's a perfect mix of happy, sad, downright crazy and especially funny thrown in you have an honest and lovable story. Characters Tom, a professional chef played by Jason Segel, and Violet, an aspiring post-doctorate student played by Emily Blunt, compliment each other so well on screen together. At the beginning of the movie they get engaged and every time they start planning their wedding, life gets in the way. People come and go and opportunity comes knocking. When Violet puts herself first, it becomes difficult for them to adjust what was once their perfect life together. The longer they keep pushing the date back, the more the relationship slowly starts to transition. They begin to give themselves up for each other and eventually it's more than either of them can take. I didn't really like that Tom did what he did towards the end of the movie but the fact that you truly believed he felt horrible for it made it more bearable. I took comfort in the reassurance that even when you know you were meant to be with someone, you still have to be ready to give at least fifty percent of all your attention and devotion to more than one cause in your life, at least for a while. Perhaps Tom and Violet simply found each other too early in life. It's an honest, raw, 21st century love story and a pretty good one at that.

When one thinks 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall' and 'Get him to the Greek', one thinks comedy, of the raunchy and the mature kind, definitely R-rated, which will also be smart.Well, we get all that in Stoller's 'engagement' here, but its also dark as well as cynical, nee, realistic, about the compromises we do to stay in a relationship, and why everyone loves playing the martyr.I'd actually watched this in a packed showing the same week it released, and feel since then that this had not got the attention it deserved, and might fade away into DVD-obscurity without making a decent buck now at least. Its frequently dark, which means it shows us what we really are, underneath all the facades, though it does take frequent detours into territory that can be considered borderline difficult-to-watch (drifter-speak) and some mildly funny scenes that go on for too long (under the assumption that the jokes are good, while in fact they're just passable, but the stretching making the whole thing kinda...excruciating).The casting's spot on, with the leads perfect in their roles, with just the right amount of chemistry to match one another step for step, and the supporting cast including Pratt and Brie getting meaty roles, along with Rhys Ifans and Chris Parnell. Kaling, Hart, Jackie Weaver and Mimi Kennedy get and not in there enough, with Dakota Johnson being on for longer than necessary, though that's not necessarily a completely bad thing. All in all, this one deserved a larger audience, and there's a moral in there somewhere as well.