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‘The Five-Year Engagement’ is Long but Charming

Emily Blunt and Jason Segel in The Five-Year Engagement © Universal Pictures

Nicholas Stoller’s romantic comedy The Five-Year Engagement is proof that you can actually overuse montage as a film technique. For those unfamiliar, 80s comedies like Revenge of the Nerds and One Crazy Summer popularized this storytelling method, making construction projects seem like a snap. Montages could successfully show days, weeks, or months passing by in a movie, while only using a few minutes of screen time.

Since the 80s, many films have effectively leveraged the montage to accomplish this goal, including The Five-Year Engagement. However Stoller’s film proves to us, that it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.

The movie introduces us to Tom (Jason Segel) and Violet (Emily Blunt), two young career-driven people who are crazy about each other. Tom hopes to become the head chef at a prestigious restaurant, and Violet aspires to a research career in academia. Their relationship isn’t perfect, but their strong love pushes them to get engaged.

Tom and Violet start to plan their nuptials; however the wedding gets derailed when a job opportunity comes up for Violet. As a progressive male, Tom agrees to leave behind life in San Francisco, so that Violet can pursue a position at the University of Michigan. Once he arrives in Ann Arbor though, crummy weather and weak career prospects cause Tom to sink into a resentful, depressed rut which threatens to tear their relationship apart.

It makes sense why Stoller would need montages; he is tasked with showing a couple’s trials over the five years that they are engaged. The primary reason he ends up overusing them though, is the film’s bloated runtime. Of the 124 minutes that Stoller co-wrote with star Jason Segel, at least 15 could be chopped to make The Five-Year Engagement much tighter. Without this excess weight, the inevitable conflict that drives the lovers apart would be sharper, and their eventual reunion would become more satisfying.

Aside from the annoying length, The Five-Year Engagement is a charming comedy that blends slapstick, raunchy, awkward and dark humor. Characters sustain amusing yet brutal physical injuries such as an arrow to the leg and a lost toe. Like Stoller and Segel’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall there’s male nudity, though thankfully in this movie you see more of Segel’s backside than his front. You also get a hilarious moment involving a faked male climax. Family members comically make Tom and Violet uncomfortable at functions and during wedding planning. Perhaps the most twisted laughs however come from death, which is used as a comedic device. The length of time it takes for Tom and Violet to marry becomes so ridiculously long, that multiple relatives die off in the interim.

Alison Brie in The Five-Year Engagement © Universal Pictures

Even though this movie centers on Tom and Violet, played convincingly by Segel and Blunt, the real stars in The Five-Year Engagement are the supporting cast. The ridiculous characters surrounding them create the majority of the humor in the movie. Among the funniest in the group are Chris Pratt who plays Tom’s loveable but moronic best friend, and Alison Brie who dons a British accent as Violet’s dimwitted sister. Honorable mention should go to comedians Brian Posehn and Chris Parnell, a self-proclaimed “pickle nerd” and stay at home dad that become part of Tom’s crew in Michigan. Violet’s co-workers from the university played by Mindy Kaling and Kevin Hart are also a blast.

Despite being slightly long-winded, The Five-Year Engagement is a heartfelt comedy which will keep you laughing all the way through. By the time Tom and Violet finally tie the knot, you’ll be genuinely happy that they found a way to make it work.

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Evan Crean: Hello! My name is Evan Crean. By day I work for a marketing agency, but by night, I’m a film critic based in Boston, MA. Since 2009, I have written hundreds of movie reviews and celebrity interviews for Starpulse.com. I have also contributed pieces to NewEnglandFilm.com and to The Independent, as a writer and editor. I maintain an active Letterboxd account too. In addition to publishing short form work, I am a co-author of the book Your ’80s Movie Guide to Better Living, which is available on CreateSpace and Amazon. The book is the first in a series of lighthearted self-help books for film fans, which distills advice from ’80s movies on how to tackle many of life’s challenges. On top of writing, I co-host and edit the weekly film podcast Spoilerpiece Theatre with two other Boston film critics. I’m a founding member and the current treasurer for the Boston Online Film Critics Association as well. This site, Reel Recon.com, is a one-stop-shop where you can find links to all of my past and present work. Have any questions or comments after checking it out? Please feel free to email me (Evan Crean) at: ecrean AT reelrecon DOT COM .

View Comments (4)

  • Definitely had a couple of very big laughs, and other times just chuckles, but it was still a fun flick even though it was too long by about 45 minutes. Comedies need to go back to being 90 minutes! Good review Evan.

  • I like Emily Blunt and fully expect her to go far in Hollywood. Is this the film to propel her into the mainstream? Maybe, maybe not...but I'm not rushing to see it. Your review Evan pushes it up my to-see list though.

    • You're right. I don't think this is necessarily the movie that pushes Emily Blunt into the mainstream, but it's a start. I wasn't sure if I was going to like it going in, however I was really surprised by how charming and honest this movie is.

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