The Five-Year Engagement - My Review

The Five Year Engagement  -  2012 -  Directed by Nicholas Stoller

I hadn't thought of it before but clearly I am not a fan of Jason Segel. His and Director Stoller's screenplay about two lovers who take five years to get married is a laughless, plodding film that literally felt like five years to me.

Segel and Emily Blunt meet, fall in love, get engaged and then face hurdle after hurdle on their way to the altar. Sound familiar? Of course it does but that doesn't bother me. Style can, and is, more often than not, more important than plot. Its not what happens so much as how it happens. 

The ending to this film is inevitable. We know it is coming. The stars know we know so why not have some fun with it? Instead we are presented with scene after mindless scene of obstacles that in no way should have prevented them from getting married earlier and having this instead called The Two-Year Engagement. It would of been a much shorter and better film.

In 1994 Ben Stiller directed the movie Reality Bites (if you haven't heard of it now you have.) In it Winona Ryder is dating Ethan Hawke and Ben Stiller. In the end she ends up with one and it is supposed to be a happy ending as it is what the audience was expecting. To me it wasn't as she clearly choose the wrong guy. I felt the same way with The Five-Year Engagement. These two characters deserved to be apart.

Rating: 3 out of 10