The Five Year Engagement

The Five Year Engagement is the story of Tom Solomon (played by Jason Segel) and Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt), a couple from San Francisco that met at a New Year's Eve "make your own superhero party".  They fall in love, Tom awkwardly proposes, and the planning for the wedding begins, then sputters, as Violet, a psychology post-grad student, lands a position at the University of Michigan.  Violet fears how Tom will react when she has to tell him the news, but Tom is calm, reassuring, and positive.  The wedding is continually postponed as Violet agrees to stay longer at Michigan.

It's a relatable premise, and there is promise for a solid film here, and in better hands (and with a better screenplay), this film could have been entertaining.  Instead, The Five Year Engagement doesn't really know what it wants to be.  It doesn't function well as a comedy (when one partner's miserable, laughs rarely follow, and some of the jokes and gags are almost painful), and doesn't work as a drama, as every chance the film gets to be intense is offset by a joke.   Most of the characters are pretty much surface-level and not fleshed out, or reduced to crudeness in an attempt for a laugh.

Overall, watching Five Year Engagement wasn't a totally miserable experience.  There were a few laughs and a few good moments, but it was more frustrating that had Segel (who co-wrote) and Nicholas Stoller (also a co-writer and also the director) chosen a more firm direction and not gone for the laugh at the serious times, they could have had a really solid film.