[The Five Year Engagement]

Coming out of The Five Year Engagement, my strongest impressions were that it felt like it was about three days long and I was tremendously grateful I hadn’t paid to see it.

It’s just a bad movie. There is no real narrative tension. Tom (Jason Segel) & Violet (Emily Blunt) live together. They (spoiler!) get engaged. They are committed enough that they move across country together when one gets a great career opportunity, and yet this move is presented as an obstruction to an actual wedding ceremony, for reasons that I still do not understand. Have a wedding! It’s not that hard!

Not that it matters, because frankly, I don’t understand why they’re a couple in the first place. We’re shown their meet cute. Repeatedly. And on the basis of that we’re meant to believe that they are Made For Each Other. Maybe they are. They’re both basically jerks

The direction is mediocre, obviously the pacing as aforementioned is terrible, and it’s frequently flat-out offensive (racism & sexual assault are still not funny, sorry to say).

Two things about this movie are good. One of them is Mindy Kaling, obviously. The other is some amazing knitwear. Seriously. You have to be a brilliant knitter to knit things this poorly on purpose. Neither of these things are enough of a reason to see it. (Sorry, Mindy!)

However. If, after The Muppets, you are looking to be cured of a crush on Jason Segel, THIS IS THE MOVIE FOR YOU. Tom is a jackass who thinks he’s adorable, & there are many, many close-ups of him with extremely unfortunate facial hair. I don’t know about the rest of you, but now I’m cured.

2 Replies to “[The Five Year Engagement]”

    1. Possibly not! As for me, I was afraid to watch The Muppets again because I feared my crush might become debilitating. But now that I’ve suffered through T5YE, I think I am safe to go forth & Muppet some more.

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