I don't often write movie reviews, let alone those about films that have been released for almost a year. However, I recently watched "The Five Year Engagement" and I decided I would, nay, should, give this film a review. As someone who can relate to the dilemmas and struggles at the core of the plot, it equally bothered me that I couldn't like it as much as I wanted to.
It's a simple enough story: Jason Segel plays Tom, an aspiring chef who loves his life and loves his fiance, Violet (Emily Blunt). But all of that is turned upside down when Violet takes a job across the country and he sacrifices his career, and a lot more, to let her realize her dreams as he was about to realize his (running his own restaurant and marriage to Violet).
Central to the movie are the performances. The supporting cast stereotypes are represented — the big, dumb best friend (Chris Pratt); the needy, overemotional sister (Alison Brie); the cool, womanizing professor (Rhys Ifans) — but they are all injected with heart and verve. For example, we know we're supposed to hate Ifans' Winton because he will inevitably hit on Violet, but we actually do like him, which makes Violet's indiscretion so tolerable later in the film.
Still, as good as the side characters are, Blunt and Segel's authentic, down to Earth performances are that much better. Their hero and heroin are a real, breathing couple and how their lives play out, while exaggerated for comic effect, are believable and even rational.
It's worth noting that even though Segel plays a character similar to that of Peter in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" (a script also written by Segel), Tom is not a victim of circumstance wallowing in his misery as Peter was, instead, we see someone who made a hard decision because he felt his hands were tied to do the right thing for the person he loves the most. And he ends up searching to find a way through its fallout, eventually disintegrating into a hapless, unhappy, shadow of his former self who works at a sandwich shop, wears old Halloween costumes around the house, and seeks out self-destructive hobbies that all climax with him having an ugly, pathetic infidelity. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Especially in relationships.
Blunt plays Violet as someone who is simultaneously seeing her worst fears come true in her personal life and exceeding her hopes professionally. She is not passive, but more at a loss on how to help Tom find the same happiness she has. She is torn between seeing her career develop and making her future husband happy, all the while, hoping he can just hang on long enough. She warned him about her fears of his possible resentment, and as he does come to resent what his life has become, if not Violet herself, she makes a mistake that seals their fate.
As good as the performances and script are, there are scenes that scream of a punchup writing job that crudely insert slapstick or random humor to remind the audience this is a comedy. And it's these moments that are my biggest problem with "The Five Year Engagement." Do we need to see Winton use parkour to escape Tom? Does Tom need to end up naked in the snow with frostbite? No. And while they do alleviate the heavy tone from what is ultimately supposed to be a comedy, they are at best a distraction, and at worst a momentum killer.
Perhaps I could let it slide if the last scene wasn't one of these moments. After a movie largely filled with the same problems and emotions that couples can recall from their own lives, we are treated to an overblown ending that squanders all the good of the previous two hours for the sake of the Hollywood ending.
In keeping of the spirit of the rest of the film, why couldn't Tom and Violet realize that their insistence on getting married is one of the things that drove a wedge between them in the first place? It's not about their engagement persevering through sibling's shotgun weddings, deaths in the family, cross-country moves, jobs, or cheating. It's that their relationship — their love for each other — survived.
And as anyone who has planned a wedding, they can tell you it doesn't get any more real than that.
