The Five-Year Engagement

While the movie started strong and quickly reached the first set of wedding delays, once the characters moved to Michigan, things bogged down quickly. Without spoiling the movie, the antics in the Wolverine State were more like bad SNL skits than part of this movie.

The characters, both primary and secondary, were very likable and were also very well developed. Some of the fringe characters (I talking to you, Dakota!) tended to be overly done and one-note. They could have been scaled back to fit their place in the movie thus adding to rather than subtracting from the story. (Math in a movie review? Who would have guessed?) Tom's job hunt problems seemed to be oriented toward setting up jokes than based in reality. A man with his background would have landed a position in Ann Arbor in a New York minute. However, Violet's drama was much better written and more believable.

Once back in San Francisco, everything picked up again and you began rooting for the home team to finally make it to the goal line.

So go enjoy the beginning and end but be ready to take a 30-minute nap in the middle. Maybe the Director's Cut with actually cut out the boring parts. One can hope.