Review No.115: The Five Year Engagement

I was woken up today with the sad news that writer-director Nora Ephron, most known for her role working on romantic comedies, had passed away only a day after I'd watched the best romcom in a good while. That film was The Five Year Engagement which is written by Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segal, who most recently worked on the script for The Muppets together, with the latter starring alongside Emily Blunt as a couple who have to postpone their wedding. The film starts with Segal's chef Tom trying to arrange a romantic way to propose to Blunt's Violet however she works out something's going on before he has a chance to do it eventually she makes him go through with his elaborate plan before agreeing to it. After an awkward engagement party Violet's sister Suzie, played by Community's Alison Brie who pulls off a very convincing English accent, and Tom's fellow chef Alex get together before having baby and eventually getting married essentially stealing the thunder of Violent and Tom. The next setback is when Violet is asked to take up a post-grad position at Michigan University after a discussion with Tom they agree to move however he fails to tell her that he was offered a head chef job at his boss' new restaurant. While Violet thrives in her new position it is Tom who struggles to find work eventually working at a deli making sandwiches and basically filling up his days waiting for his fiancée to come home. Tom becomes unhappy in Michigan which means that Violet has to confide in her professor, played by a suitably slimy Rhys Ifans, but will she give into temptation and risk wasting the engagement that has been going on so long?

Something else that goes on far too long is this film, at just over two hours The Five Year Engagement suffers from too many similar scenes as Tom struggles to adjust to his Michigan lifestyle. I think at least fifteen to twenty minutes could've been trimmed either from these scenes or some of the latter parts of the film building up to the inevitable conclusion. The other element of the film I wasn't too keen on one was the fact that the problems in Violet and Tom's relationship arise from a stale doughnut but I won't go into that as I'm expecting most of you haven't seen the film. I don't think the Michigan tourist board will be too happy with this film as their state is presented as a complete hole in which there is nothing to do, there are no job opportunities for culinary-minded chefs and the only place of note is the university but I suppose at the end of the day the film's setting is where most of the jokes are found. Thankfully the film has more negatives than positives mainly due to the brilliant chemistry between real-life friends Blunt and Segal who seem like a believable couple from their first meeting at a new year's party through to their ups and downs depicted in the film. Blunt is perfectly charming a great counter-balance to Segal's usual goofy routine which here is completely endearing. Segal and Stoller's script is also full of laughs throughout with my favourite moment being Alex's song about Tom's former conquests set to the tune of 'We Didn't Start the Fire' as well as a rather uncomfortable version of 'The Birdy Song' danced after a shocking revelation. Ifans is also brilliant as the smarmy professor who tries to entice Violet throughout her time at the university while these scenes are also spiced up by her post-grad colleagues who all have increasingly bizarre ideas about what would work best as a test experiment. Overall this reminded me of Segal and Stoller's earlier film Forgetting Sarah Marshall as both are peppered with decent jokes but suffer from being overlong and having a bad narrative structure. That being said I definitely enjoyed The Five Year Engagement more as it had bigger laughs, more chemistry between the central couple and most crucially of all no Russell Brand. So it's a very sad RIP to Nora Ephron and while The Five Year Engagement may not be on the same level as When Harry Met Sally or Sleepless in Seattle but I think she'd be glad to know that even after she's gone the genre she created is still going strong.

Verdict: A charming and funny romcom that boasts plenty of jokes plus an easy chemistry between the leads is let down by being overlong as well as becoming repetitive in its final third so for those reasons it gets a very high 7/10