Movie Review: The Five Year Engagement

The Five Year Engagement is an enjoyable rom-com that I have just finished watching. What happens to two people who are meant to be together after they have found each other? That's the searching, funny-sad question posed by this movie, a lively, original, and hilarious ramble of a Judd Apatow flick (love his movies). From the moment we meet them, there's no doubt that Tom, played by Jason Segel and Violet, played by Emily Blunt are very much in love. On top of that, they appreciate the good fortune that brought them together on a fateful New Year's Eve. They live in San Francisco, where he's a chef on the rise in a food-crazy town, and she's a psychologist dreaming of a job at Berkeley.

Well, that's one dream that isn't meant to happen. Shortly after the two get engaged, Berkeley turns her down, then an alternative offer arrives of a two-year research position at the University of Michigan. It's Violet's best shot at an academic career, so she feels she has to take it. And Tom, fully supports her and the plan. Except that when the couple move to Michigan, it turns out that his job opportunities are less than zero, the best he can come up with is making sandwiches in a Deli.

The Five-Year Engagement was directed by Nicholas Stoller, from a script he co-wrote with Segel, and like their earlier Apatow collaboration, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the movie has an unpredictable structure that works for it. It only pretends, in fact, to be about a couple who have to postpone their wedding plans, year after year. Yes, that's the basic outline, but Tom and Violet, despite their up-in-the-air circumstances, could easily tie the knot. The real issue is that marriage wouldn't begin to solve their problem — which is that Tom, his career currently dead, loses his purpose, his mojo, his joyful side. He keeps dreaming of the head chef job he could have had at Clam Bar, a San Francisco hot spot that gave the job to his buddy Alex. Tom starts to hang with a fellow faculty husband (Chris Parnell), who takes him on hunting trips, and in between shooting at deer, he grows a terrible beard and sinks into a depression. The more he sinks the funnier the movie gets. The comedy even turns violent, with gory incidents involving a crossbow and a lost toe.

Once you buy into its premise, the movie is an enjoyable bag of messy life circumstances. Tom and Violet drift, love, fight, disengage, do pillow-talk therapy, and that's all before Tom goes off the deep end. Meanwhile, the movie, like so many Apatow productions, finds  redemption in the spirit of the group — Tom's co-workers, and also Violet's amusing team psychology colleague's. The Five Year Engagement isn't a comedy about falling in love. It's a comedy about falling from love, and grasping your way back to a happily ever after.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IoRF_Bzuwtk