Genre: Comedy, Romance
Rating: B
The Five-Year Engagement is about a twenty-something couple, Tom
(Segel) and Violet (Blunt) who have their lives completely turned upside down
after getting engaged; Violet is accepted into post-grad program, causing the
couple to move from sunny California to snowy Michigan. Hilarity and problems ensue as Michigan
proves to be the place where relationships go to die. The wedding is postponed several times, and
the couple begin to question their love and commitment to each other. In short, it is everything that you would
expect from a romantic comedy, a movie that girls drag their boyfriends to, and
the boyfriends go to in the hopes of being laid. Except, the difference between The Five-Year Engagement and other
rom-coms is that The Five-Year Engagement
is actually a funny movie.
The humour in this movie is very
much what you would expect from a movie penned by Jason Segel and directed by
Judd Apatow. It isn’t as much of a
stoner flick as other Apatow films; there are no drugs nor intoxicated
ramblings. It is a bit sexist,
particularly at the beginning, but as everyone except for Katherine Heigl appears
to have figured out, Apatow does this intentionally, to allow his characters to
grow. Blunt’s character is very much an
intelligent woman on her way to success, and at the start of the film so is
Segel’s character. Then they make the
move and Segel becomes very much a man child; unable to find a satisfying job (because
there are no restaurants in Michigan) he settles for a job at a sandwich shop
and slowly loses his manhood. Somehow,
this is entertaining and the laughs continue as Tom becomes more and more
pathetic. There reaches a point in the
film when the viewer is questioning just what Violet still sees in her fiancé;
fortunately, she reaches the same conclusion as well.
There are problems with The Five-Year Engagement, particularly
with Segel’s mid-movie man child state. The
beginning of the film tries to paint him as this great guy making a huge
sacrifice for the woman he loves, while Blunt is cruel for putting him in such
a position. As the movie progresses,
however, the two begin to grow as characters and eventually they come to
realize that there is more to life than what you gain and give up, it’s about
the compromises along the way. It’s
about how you look at life; if you look at it with a negative attitude, then of
course it’s all going to be shit and snow.
That’s another trick that the film utilizes; when they’re miserable in
Michigan everything is covered in snow, but when they finally start to figure
life out the sun comes out again. It’s a
nice little symbolic way to approach the feelings of the characters. And in the end, it being a romantic comedy,
the sun does come out again.
No comments:
Post a Comment