The Five Year Engagement

Starring: Emily Blunt, Jason Segel
Directed by: Nick Stohler
Rating: I Liked It

This movie had high expectations to live up to for me.  Segel has been in an awesome run of movies from Knocked Up to Forgetting Sarah Marshall to I Love You, Man.  This one is just a contintuation of that run of good flicks.  It didn't quite live up to I Love You, Man, which is one of my favorite movies of all time, but it was still good.  

The premise is pretty simple.  Tom (Segel) and Violet (Blunt) get engaged, but things get in the way.  Violet's relationship leads them to relocating and Tom leaving his job.  The couple puts off the wedding more than once.  Hilarity ensues.

The Good:

• I've recently seen Segel in some interviews with Leno and other talk show hosts.  He's kind of awkward in a way.  I'm glad we don't see that when he's portraying a character.  He was great as was Blunt throughout the movie.  
• This wasn't your typical rom-com, and I liked that.  These were two real-world types with whom you could really connect.  
• The comedy is plentiful, but it doesn't overshadow the seriousness of the characters' situations.  
• The time of the engagement, five years, wasn't so much the focus that it made the movie slow.  A lot of that time was shown through quick changes through the seasons.  

The Bad: 

• I'm always talking about casting, and in this case, I have to talk about it in a not quite so positive way. If you'll notice I didn't put this under "The Ugly" heading, and that's because it wasn't awful...it just wasn't as good as it could have been.  Some of the parts were great.  David Paymer as Tom's (Segel) dad was great, as was Jim Piddock as Violet's (Blunt) dad.  The grandparents all played the parts well.  The one big thing I couldn't get past, and maybe it's just because they paired so well before, was the part of Alex (Chris Pratt), Tom's best friend, being played by someone other than Paul Rudd.  I wanted that to be Rudd so much I almost saw him saying some of the lines.  Not that Pratt didn't do a good job, he did.  Also, I thought Rhys Ifans was great as Violet's mentor.  
• Something else that kind of got to me were the characters in general.  I thought some of them were just a little too out there.  Violet's research team in general was a little weird, especially Ming (Randall Park).  

The Ugly: 

• Again with the casting...  I really can't stand Brian Poshen or Chris Parnell, but that's really just a personal preference.