The Five Year Engagement is part Bridesmaids, part Lost in America, part New in Town, and part gross, Judd Apatow crap – it’s kind of a mishmash, a mishmash that does not hang together particularly well. A lot of the film is a pretty predictable rehash of elements of the above-mentioned films, but occasionally there are little, focused comic skits which break it up a bit. Some of these are pretty good (I liked the one where the vacuous 20-something chick goes off on Jason Segel,) but most leave you with the feeling that they could have been done better (e.g the Elmo / Cookie Monster scene.) A lot of the comedy in this film feels a bit forced; it does not flow easily like the best comedy.

The comedy is also hurt by the fact that there is not a shred of realism in the film’s story. The thing that made Lost in America so funny is that Albert Brooks got it all perfectly spot-on, and I say this from having experienced an episode in my life very much like their travails in that movie. But The Five Year Engagement makes no sense. Why didn’t he just talk to Emily Blunt after he found out he got a head chef’s job? It is not a rare thing for couples to do long distance relationships for a few years at the beginning, due to job commitments. And this wasn’t even a job, it was a post doc in a very questionable field. Why would Emily Blunt let him degenerate so extremely, indeed why would she even like him any more, or want to come home? Why would Jason Segel let himself be destroyed for so long? Why didn’t his best friend take him aside and talk sense to him? Are these people all retarded? The film tries to be clever about life and at the same time be completely absurd. They don’t mix very well.

Basically what this film has going for it are Emily Blunt and Jason Segel: they are attractive, they have great voices, and it’s pretty hard to go wrong with them at the center of a movie. It also has (running inconsistently under the main story themes) the heartfelt warmth of Jason Segel’s writing. But I wish he had more of an influence on the writing of this film. This film lacks the consistent humanity of his Forgetting Sarah Marshall, for example; there was a certain confidence and coherence in that film that Five Year Engagement totally lacks. The Five Year Engagement does not know exactly what it wants to be, and this dilutes the viewer experience quite a bit.

Still, I recommend it if you are in the mood for a very light diversion with great leads and a lot of silliness and mild laughs. It’s not a bad film.