The Five-Year Engagement

Familiarity doesn’t exactly breed success in The Five-Year Engagement, which re-teams director Nicholas Stoller and star Jason Segel.

However, the romantic comedy is neither a companion piece nor a sequel to Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), which marked both filmmaker and actor as names to watch.

The pair also has worked together in a writing capacity on both films, as well as the Sarah Marshall offshoot Get Him to the Greek and on Segel’s successful reboot of The Muppets.

So it’s of little surprise that their latest collaboration bears some similarities to their first effort, not only in comedic attitude, but in its various narrative pitfalls.

Segel plays Tom, a San Francisco chef who proposes to girlfriend Violet (Emily Blunt) after the couple has been dating for a year. But the romance takes a geographic detour when Violet accepts a post-doctorate job in Michigan, forcing Tom to relocate as well, placing an unexpected strain on their relationship when Tom is forced to put his career on hold.

Meanwhile, friends and family members experience varying degrees of success in their lives, sending Tom into a downward spiral just as Violet’s work continues to thrive.

The Five-Year Engagement shows that perhaps Stoller and Segel have matured somewhat in terms of their sensibilities. The film has a genuine sweetness and poignancy in spots rather than just aiming for broad laughs.

Segel and Blunt have a reasonable if slightly offbeat chemistry, perhaps the result of their having worked together previously — though not as love interests — on The Muppets and Gulliver’s Travels.

However, the script is uneven and doesn’t know when to quit. The title sets up a countdown clock of sorts for the couple’s impending nuptials, and the film could have used a significant trim to avoid grinding through the second half.

The film is elongated by an abundance of tangents and contrivances (with the usual eccentric supporting characters) that not only compromise the promising set-up, but also drown out most of the charm generated by its two leads.

By the end, the film provides some solid gags but lacks much deeper insight into contemporary relationships, making an audience invitation to the wedding almost irrelevant.

Rated R, 124 minutes.