The Five-Year Engagement - movie review

Release date: 22 June 2012
Certificate: 15
Director: Nicholas Stoller
Starring: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Rhys Ifans

What's the story?
Sous chef Tom (Segel) exchanges a promising career in San Francisco for a Michigan McJob, just so his fiancée Violet (Blunt) can fulfil her academic ambitions in subzero Ann Arbor.

What did we think?
There are lots of laughs to be had in the latest comedy from the director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, though not enough to justify its generous running time. But Segel and Blunt are an appealing duo, while Ifans lends suitably sleazy support as the university lothario who comes between them.

Jason Segel and Emily Blunt were literally overshadowed by Jack Black in Gulliver's Travels and took similarly subordinate roles in The Muppets. Now they get their own chance to shine in a glossy rom-com that, like countless before it, shows the course of true love rarely does run smooth.

That doesn't initially seem the case for Tom and Violet after they meet cute at a New Year's fancy dress party. (He's in a fluffy bunny outfit - talk about cute! - while she is dressed up like Princess Diana.) After he pops the question, though, circumstances conspire to postpone their happy day, chief amongst them his decision to put his own career on hold so that she can better hers.

Jason's subsequent decline into a bearded, unhappy shlub puts an intolerable strain on their relationship, as does the predatory advances of her insinuating boss (Rhys Ifans). The longer their nuptials are delayed however, the more Nicholas Stoller's film comes to depend on its eye-catching comic support, the likes of stand-up Kevin Hart, Office star Mindy Kaling and Mad Men's Alison Brie (sporting a pitch-perfect British accent as Violet's scatty younger sister) providing the guffaws Segel and Blunt's increasingly poignant imbroglio does not.

Verdict: Pretty engaging.