The Five Year Engagement is diverting but not life altering

Published on June 26, 2012 at 1:00 pm by Darragh Roche, Editor

 

The Five Year Engagement is a diverting film which somehow managed to bypass all my bitter cynical receptors and earn itself some accreditation for a well thought-out, composed and clever movie. The wit is charming without being over the top funny and despite some brief lulls throughout the middle section retains its sense of self until the movie’s closure. Thankfully, I can report that the usual discerning nature of romantic comedies becoming pretentious from the middle onwards is wisely avoided here and I have to commend the makers for producing a film which deals with the emotional implications of actually being in a relationship, instead of the usual ‘will they, won’t they’ before one of the couple burns their name into the other’s lawn. Jason Segal and Emily Blunt have some real chemistry on screen and upon finding out they are friends in real life one can easily see why.

 Without giving too much away, the decision to actually split the couple up genuinely added tension to the narrative and I found myself wondering how the movie was going to pan out. The actual ending should, however, be fairly obvious and if not you might want to consider leaving your cave more often. The secondary characters are also charming if not a bit cliché but they work to great effect and the conversations, regardless of how silly, still appear to be plausible. I can honestly and frankly admit that there was not a single character throughout the film I disliked and this makes my typical love of berating things much harder. If I was to offer any real criticism I would have to point out that with a run time of two hours, four minutes it is slightly too long for a comedy and some scenes could have been shortened or removed. The humour is also very similar to previous productions by Nicholas Stoller and I often found myself drawing comparisons to Forgetting Sarah Marshall. If, like me, that doesn’t bother you in the slightest I can give this film four out of five and recommend you go see it. Just don’t expect it to be mind blowing or life alternating.

CHARLIE CONDELL


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