The Five-Year Engagement

A shambling rom-com from writers Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and that movie's star Jason Segel, finds Segel as a San Francisco sous chef who nervously proposes to grad student girlfriend Emily Blunt as the movie opens. As one expects from the title, plans go awry. The couple moves to Michigan when Blunt receives a job with lecherous professor Rhys Ifans, and Californian Segel gets some of the biggest laughs just dealing with snow, but overall the stakes are very low here. There's not enough heart to be any kind of notable romance, and not all that much concern for jokes to be much of a comedy. Some drunken cheating and a third act separation seem for a while to suggest a more maudlin ending. But mostly, like the relationship it features, the film plods along; content, cute, and barely there. -Jacob Boon