REVIEW | The Five Year Engagement

The Five-Year Engagement is a typical Apatow comedy and it made me laugh. It didn’t make me laugh loads but I chuckled a fair few times and I was in hysterics once. This is not too bad. The Five-Year Engagement is also a drama and it moved me. It didn’t move me loads but I had some genuine concern for our leads and it made me ask questions of them and myself. The fact that it is both of these things is its first problem and the problem from which all future problems stem. Of course dramas can be funny and comedies can be moving, but here the crass humour does not sit well with the somewhat sweet story of life testing love. We get Chris Pratt being Seth Rogen and doing it well, but a Rogen-character is as welcome in this film as he would be in The Notebook. We get two additional male characters for Segel to interact with who are both boring as fuck, and, due to the level of drama created, it ends with the comedy elements lacking conviction.

Instead, this is a comedy that should have made Blunt’s character the lead, ditched the crude, laddy jokes, and accepted that this is a more traditional rom-com. With The Five Year Engagement we have the first Apatow movie written for a predominantly female audience, it’s just a shame that the makers are not aware of it.

Verdict: Movie

DAN

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