Thursday, November 17, 2011

THE FIVE YEAR ENGAGEMENT



"The Five-Year Engagement" stars Jason Segel and Emily Blunt in a comedy about a couple that can't get their emotional shit together and so they make each other miserable for five long years (and two long hours for the rest of us).



TEST SCREENING: Okay. To be fair that description doesn't sound that favorable for "The Five Year Engagement". According to Imdb.com it will be released in April of 2012. April is generally one of the cesspool months for Hollywood:  they just unload all the crap they know for sure is crap (a lot of times they can't  tell -- that explains Summer) and the shit they want to bury.  Remember "Arthur"? The reconstituted version with Russell Brand that was a piece of shit? You get my drift.

Keeping that in mind, I'm going to say that "TFYE" is an exception to the aforementioned rule.

The premise of "TFYEt" is one that is intriguing and it is not normally explored in most Hollywood films. This story picks up where most romantic comedies leave of:  a marriage proposal. But, like a lot of relationships that we experience and see in real life it goes to shit.  When we meet Tom (Jason Segel) and Victoria (Emily Blunt), they are couple who are celebrating their one-year anniversary. Tom proposes to Victoria and she begins to plan a wedding but, as John Lennon said, "Life is what happens when you're making other plans". For Tom and Victoria "Life" intrudes with other people's weddings, job offers, sexual temptations, deaths in the family and five years of not knowing what the fuck they are doing. For that reason this story is highly relatable because who of us in this life really know what the fuck we're doing?

This  is a strong comedy but on a fairly adult level.  It's not "Midnight in Paris" sophisticated -- what the fuck is!?  But, at the same time people aren't puking or shitting all over each other. It does have some  low brow tendencies but that side is marginalized in favor for some real tender moments between the characters. Those moments are fueled by strong performances from Segel and Blunt (except I think her forehead may be over botoxed because it never moved) and by very strong supporting performances from Chris Pratt and Alison Brie. There are some moments that are like, whatever -- gross out type scenes (typical sight gags). And there are some scenes that just drag the movie down. I suspect that those will be removed by the time the film is released because the third act was way too long.

The screenwriters and the director are men (Nicholas Stoller and the star Jason Segel) but this one definitely appeals to chicks in the tone of the humor and it's more emotional moments: like, you're going to have to watch a grown ass man cry and shit -  but chicks dig that.  They'll probably try to market this to the "Crazy, Stupid, Love." crowd (there's even a Ryan Gosling cameo via a scene from "The FUCKING Notebook" but "TFYE" is better than "Crazy, Stupid, Love."(which, and this is after seeing it twice - I officially hate but not as much as I hate "The Notebook") because it's characters are more well rounded.


But that being said, Genre gives "The Five Year Engagement" 3.5 out of 5 points.

No comments:

Post a Comment