The Five-Year Engagement

Logline: One year after meeting, Tom proposes to his girlfriend, Violet, but unexpected events keep tripping them up as they look to walk down the aisle together.

Cast: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Chris Pratt, Alison Brie, Rhys Ifans

Directed by: Nicholas Stoller

I was mildly excited for this one. I've liked Jason Segel in a lot of things and this is his first time hooking up with director Nicholas Stoller since their huge success Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I also had a good impression of Emily Blunt. The first 20 minutes of The Adjustment Bureau had me hooked due to the awesome chemistry between her and Matt Damon; I was disappointed when the movie turned weird, I was content with it being a romance. Now she's in a rom com? I was sold.

Summary

Tom and Violet get engaged. Usually when this happens, a wedding follows months and maybe even a year or so after. Normally. But for these two unlucky campers, whenever they set a certain time frame, something bad always happens that makes them postpone. Whether it be Violet's sister getting pregnant, Violet's sister getting married, whatever. It just seems almost impossible for their marriage to ever happen.

Violet gets a job in Michigan, Tom quits his cooking job just as he was about to receive a huge promotion, and the two travel there only to have things get even worse. We find out that Violet struggles with commitment and often steers away from things that aren't perfect. Tom is, well... he's just kind of there along for the ride.

Review

Going into this movie I was sold on the cast and director, but in the back of my mind the title kept whispering to me: long and boring. I really hoped this wasn't the case. I was really rooting for this movie to work and be another addition to my list of movies where jumping through periods of time has worked. To be completely blunt and simple - it didn't.

Plot points were easily predictable. As soon as Violet met the character of Winton Childs (Rhys Ifans, the Lizard) it was soooooo obvious that he would either have a romantic attraction towards her, or they both would towards each other. The plotline basically spells out every bit of conflict in this movie, taking away any surprises possible. Going into the film you know that they won't get married for five years, so you're just waiting for stuff to go wrong. It doesn't come as a surprise and none of the events are really that interesting or unique. The character of Tom is a chef. That's pretty much all I can say about him. Maybe he's a go-with-the-flow type dude, maybe he loves Violet? Either way, very stock. Nothing about this movie stood out to me. The only thing I'll remember in the future about it is the scene in the restaurant after hours where a girl grotesquely tries to seduce Tom by putting food all over the both of them. I won't remember it for comedic reasons, I'll remember it for how depressingly bad this movie was. 

At least the Lizard was in it. He's actually a pretty good actor.

Topic of the Day

Time jumping.

Goodfellas and City of God do this concept so well. It's a concept I'm still trying to learn more about. The problem with jumping months after months between sequences in a movie is that it disconnects the audience from the characters and story. What happened in those months? Are we to expect that nothing did? We should probably know what happened if we're going to invest our time into the story. You know? The reason I think this movie didn't work was because we didn't really get to know our characters well enough. Violet gets a psych job in Michigan, Tom is a cook. Violet doesn't like commitment (that's obvious from the title), Tom... doesn't want to be alone? Boring. So boring. Then when the movie jumps months ahead, who the hell even cares what's going to happen next. I think if you're going to jump months or years between sequences in a movie, you need to have your characters completely explored before you do so. City of God takes the first 20-25 minutes going into detailed backstory. VERY detailed backstory. Coincidentally, Goodfellas does the exact same thing. The Five-Year Engagement does not, and it suffers miserably for it.

Consensus

This movie could have been done in 1h and 30mins. That would have cut out 30mins of boredom that I had to suffer through. The characters are boring, the story has no sense of urgency to it, and the stakes are never raised. What happens if they don't get married? Nothing bad would happen. Nothing that would catch my interest enough to care. This was a huge disappointment. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. In fact, I'd go as far as to steer people away from it.

2/10