Posts tagged The Five-Year Engagement

“More Like the Five-Year Movie”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

The Five-Year Engagement was made by the same people who made the 2008 Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and so it must be good, right?

Well, yes and no. Yes, it is good in some places, and no, it is not good in other places, mainly the scenes that go on for too long and the scenes that should have been cut in the first place.

Jason Segal and Emily Blunt star as Tom and Violet. They met a year ago at a New Year’s Eve party, which we keep seeing in flashbacks at various times throughout the movie.

They get engaged, and during a meeting with Tom’s relatives to plan the engagement party, one of the men comments that the men will all be wearing yarmulkes, of course. Violet says to Tom that he doesn’t have a yarmulke, and he replies that he does and, “It’s in my Jewish drawer.”

The story begins in San Francisco, and you can guess from the title that the engagement isn’t going to go smoothly, right?

Correct. Violet is working on her doctorate in psychology, and she gets accepted to a position at the University of Michigan, which will take two years to complete.

However, because Tom is a chef in a restaurant, he says that he can always find a job anywhere, and so they decide that Tom will move to Michigan with Violet, and they will postpone the wedding for two years.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, couldn’t they get married in San Francisco before moving to Michigan, or couldn’t they even get married in Michigan?

But if they did that, then the filmmakers would have to change the title of the movie, wouldn’t they?

Well, you can guess from the title that the two-year plan isn’t going to go smoothly, either, right? Violet’s work at the University of Michigan gets extended, and I don’t want to spoil anything, but at one point the situation gets so bad that it looks like there won’t be any wedding at all.

Now, you know how the DVD version of some movies contains deleted scenes? Maybe the DVD of this movie will thankfully be missing some scenes that should have been cut.

The Five-Year Engagement lives up to its reputation of being a comedy, but it is more like the five-year movie.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”