The Five-Year Engagement

Four Funerals and a Wedding

---

Rated: R Sexual content and language throughout
Release Date: April 27, 2012
Runtime:  2 hrs 4 mins

---

Director: Nicolas Stoller
Writers: Jason Segel, Nicolas Stoller
Cast: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Chris Pratt, Allison Brie, Mimi Kennedy, David Payer, Rhys Ifans, Kevin Hart

---

---

SYNOPSIS: A year after they met, Tom Solomon proposes marriage to Violet Barnes. As they try to prepare for their wedding, obstacles keep getting the way of their engagement.

REVIEW: Nicolas Stoller has been busy as of late, directing films like Get Him to the Greek and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and performing writing duties for films including Yes Man and The Muppets. Partnering again with writer and actor Jason Segel (The Muppets), they both share writing credits for The Five-Year Engagement, while Stoller helms the film behind the monitors. 

In San Francisco in New Year's Eve, one year after they first met, sous chef Tom Solomon (Jason Segel, The Muppets) clumsily proposes to his academic girlfriend Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen). Now engaged, they start to plan their wedding. When Violet gets a 2-year post doc position at the University of Michigan Psychology Department run by Winton Childs (Rhys Ifans, Anonymous), Tom gives up his promising career to be with her near campus in Ann Arbor, as well as agreeing to postpone the wedding date until they get settled. One thing after another gets in the way of their wedding plans, forcing them to reschedule their reservations and reevaluate their relationship.

The Five-Year Engagement is a hilarious film with a sweet story along with it. Jason Segel has proven he can hang with the big boys with his comedy chops and writing skills. With The Muppets and Get Him to the Greek under his belt for his writing resume and CBS's How I Met Your Mother to hone his comedy chops, Segel is perched on the edge of romantic comedy stardom if The Five-Year Engagement does well. Emily Blunt, fresh off her romantic turn as Harriet in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Matt Damon's muse in The Adjustment Bureau, brings a gorgeous smile, a fine British accent, and her own sense of comedy and romance to her role as Violet. Segel and Blunt are center stage with all of the angst that wedding preparations can cause, but they are helped along the way by a  cadre of supporting cast that fill in the story nicely.Chris Pratt (Moneyball) plays Tom's goofball chef friend Alex who manages to say all the wrong and most inappropriate things in support of his friend. Violet's sister Suzie (Alison Brie, Scream 4) manages to beat Violet to the punch in most respects with funny results, and also manages to prepare a memorable engagement speech. Violet's post doc friends include masturbation obsessed Doug (Kevin Hart, Think Like A Man), gossipy Vaneetha (Mindy Kaling, No Strings Attached), and off-beat Ming (Randall Park, Larry Crowne) round out Violet's psychology ring under the tuteluge of Dr. Childs. Tom also has his own group of U of M friends, including sweater knitting Bill (Chris Parnell, 21 Jump Street) and sandwich shop pickle expert Tarquin (Brian Posehn, Sex Drive). Hart is a little understated compared to his Cedric role in Think Like A Man, Kaling is a clone of The Office's Kelly Kapoor, Parnell is a montage of several roles he has played in skits or other comedies, and Posehn is always a little weird. The real break-outs are Parks and Recreation's Chris Pratt recreating his moron role with great success, and Alison Brie tacking on an accent and adding great timing to her sisterly character. I guess Mad Men and Community have has a positive effect on her. And play special attention to her and Blunt's rendition of a coupe of Sesame Street characters.

In this tale, the comedy is better then the romance. Jason Segel knows how to work his way around the funny bone. Strange settings and props, including many parts of venison and the beast it comes from, make for silly situations. On the romantic side, Segel is indeed a capable actor but Blunt rules the roost with her smiles and skills. Segel and writer/director Stolling balance the dramatics and the funny digs in perfect harmony, with a slight leaning toward the gut-busting versus the eye-gushing.

The Five-Year Engagement is an obvious title for the Segel and Blunt film. It could have been called Four Funerals and a Wedding but I think that parody title was already taken. You will laugh out loud quite a bit, but may not shed the tear you want to for the typical romantic comedy. Overall, the story works, the actors excel at their craft, and the audience will be engaged for the 124 minute film. The time will not feel as long as a five-year engagement, but you wonder how it will ever work out in the end, if at all.

---

WORTH: Matinee or Rental

Midnight in Paris

Surreal Realizations

Director: Woody Allen

Writers: Woody Allen

Stars: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Kurt Fuller, Mimi Kennedy, Michael Sheen, Corey Stoll, Tom Hiddleston, Kathy Bates, Marion Cotillard

SYNOPSIS: On a trip to Paris with his fiancee, Gil begins to question his life decisions as he wanders around beautiful city at night and meeting an interesting host of characters.

REVIEW: Woody Allen writes and directs Midnight in Paris, a film that defies Allen's recent works and defines many of Allen's works. From Sleeper where the protagonist is revived in the future to fight an oppressive government, to Play It Again, Sam where a film critic tries to return to the dating scene with help from an alter ego in the form of Humphrey Bogart, to any one in a laundry list of visual and deeply meaningful films, whether the backdrop is New York City or abroad. Filled with dialogue that is anything but empty, Midnight in Paris is at once transcendent, beautiful, quirky and meaningful.

Considered to be a romantic comedy, Midnight in Paris is more Gil's (Owen Wilson) romance of Paris and the images it invokes than a romance of his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams). Gil is an in-demand Hollywood screenwriter, but aspiring novelist who wonders if his earlier decision years previous to move out of the French capital in favor of the California Sun Coast. He romanticizes the "Golden Age" of art and literature of 1920s Paris and yearns to use present day Paris to inspire and help him succeed in finishing a book worthy of those earlier masters.

One night as his fiancee wants to go out dancing with a friend Paul (Michael Sheen), a tipsy Gil wanders the Paris streets to clear his head and take in the nuances of each cobblestone road and centuries old corridor. At the strike of midnight, a 1920s era Puegot pulls up and beckons Gil to come for a ride with them. Little does be realize, but Gil has travels to the 1920s era to mean and interact with the likes of F. SCott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston from Thor), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll from Salt), Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) and the enigmatic Adriana (Marion Cotillard). First Gil is doubtful but then embraces each midnight rendezvous with his literary and artist idols, even bold enough to ask for help with his relationship and manuscript.

The story is filled with the glorious beauty that is Paris, from the Eiffel Tower to a forgotten alleyway. Allen takes the most mundane event of Gil, Inez and her mother hailing a taxi in the starts of a rain shower and fills the backdrop with a cathedral's dome and terraced landscapes. Gil's nostalgia of 1920s Paris is felt when a cafe where he meets Ernest Hemingway disappears in the blink of an eye and is replaced with a modern day laundromat. Allen even captured the nuances of French life when Inez's father John (Kurt Fuller), at the restaurant where they met for lunch, keeps glancing behind him because of a man with a dog sitting at the table. Anyone who has experienced Paris firsthand can appreciate the culture, the city and the romance it commands.

Owen Wilson is his typical roguish, self-effacing self as Gil, excited for the city and what it holds, but differential to the wants and demands of his fiancee Inez. Marion Cotillard, most recently from Inception, plays Adriana with a wisp of artist's muse and a wistful passion for the nostalgia that both she and Gil long for. Among the colorful characters from Gil's past, most notable are Stoll's Ernest Hemingway as his courageous and poignant prose smoothly comes through Allen's script, Adrien Brody's cameo as Salvador Dali who when Gil meets him is obsessed with rhinoceros, and Vinccint Menjou Cortes's quiet lonesome portrayal of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Any Woody Allen enthusiast, any creative individual, or any fan of quirky romantic comedic misadventures will appreciate Midnight in Paris. Some people may look only to the future with no regard for the past or present, and others may only long back to an age that cannot exist in the present, know that there is both beauty and substance in the here and now.

WORTH: Matinee or DVD