Rachel’s DVD Extras - “Most Engagements end up like ‘Saving Private Ryan’. Good Luck. God knows you’re going to need it”

Hello Everyone :-)

I realised something the other day; I’d forgot to write up some films. One was because I went to see it on my Birthday and I must have been distracted by the various celebrations that were happening at the time and it slipped my mind. So I’ve decided to write it up now as a 'DVD extra' because it was released last week on DVD and Blu-Ray. Let’s have a look at ‘The Five Year Engagement’.

Tom and Violet are a couple living in San Francisco that get engaged a year after they started dating. Tom is a sous chef at a successful restaurant and Violet is a psychology PhD graduate. The couple begin their engagement with the best of intentions but unfortunately life gets in the way of their planned nuptials.

I enjoyed ‘The Five Year Engagement’. It was advertised as “From the producer of Bridesmaids” but it’s not as broadly comic as that statement would suggest. It is funny but its humour comes mainly from its observations of life as an engaged couple that are fighting to keep it together.

I think this is quite nice spin on the modern Rom-Com. The characters are well written, believable and in a genre that is so often filled by adults that behave like they’re teenagers these are adults that (to a certain extent) act like they’re adults. The characters have jobs and families and worry about grown up things like money which gives the film a nice authenticity. The times the story strays into the realms of unbelievably is when it’s at its worst. One of the characters has a breakdown during part of the film that just seemed a little bit OTT and not in keeping with the rest of the film's realistic look at relationships.

The two leads are great and there are some nice supporting roles. Jason Segel as Tom is really very sweet and believable. He makes the phone call that we have all made to our ex where you try to be civil but then descend into name calling and blame pinning.

Emily Blunt is effortless and charming as ever. She is funny, sweet, clever, beautiful, all at the same time… some girls really do have all the luck!

I like the supporting performances from Alison Brie as Violet’s sister Suzie, Chris Pratt as Tom’s best friend Alex and Rhys Ifans at his slimy best as Winton, Violets lecherous Boss. That said the strength of the film is in the central pairing between Blunt and Segel. They’re adorable, the conversations they have are really realistic and above all else they make you root for them; you want it to work out between them.

The film’s humour is quite gentle save for a few broadly comic scenes. Tom’s relationship with Chris Parnell and Brian Posehn’s characters Bill and Tarquin lends itself to some brilliantly gawky moments but it’s the Elmo/Cookie Monster conversation between Violet and Suzie that had me in absolute stitches. Some of the attempts at comedy fell a little wide of the mark. The scenes with Violet’s colleagues Ming (Randall Park), Vaneetha (Mindy Kaling) and Doug (Kevin Hart) didn’t work for me. Also a scene with a breakfast conversation between Tom and his parents jarred. It didn’t make me laugh partly because it seemed to have been clumsily improvised and felt really awkward to watch.

Overall I liked ‘The Five Year Engagement’. It’s attempts at out and out comedy sometimes miss the target; it sags a little at the start of the third act and could have done with 15-20 minutes being cut from the run time but by and large I think it succeeds. It plays well with its intended audience (I went with 4 of my girlfriends and by the end of it we were ALL a little bit in love with Jason Segel) and it would take the stoniest of hearts not to warm to the central coupling of Violet and Tom. Highly recommended rom-com fluff :-)

Now it’s time for some…

Reasons to be Cheerful :-)

1. ‘The Hour’ is back! YAY! I recently saw the trailer again for the new series and immediately got on Amazon bought series 1 on DVD. I’ve been watching it again these past two days and I must say it’s so bloody good! There are some clips on the BBC website; a chat with the show's writer Abi Morgan and a clip from the first episode of the new series! Series 2 starts on Wednesday 14^th November at 9pm on BBC 2.

 2. New series of ‘Black Mirror’ has been confirmed! The always wonderful Charlie Brooker have been speaking about the new series and lots of lovely things besides :-)

That’s all I’ve got for you today!

Goodbye till next time :-)

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