REVIEW: The Five-Year Engagement

The Five-Year Engagement (2012): Dir. Nicholas Stoller. Written by: Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller. Starring: Jason Segal, Emily Blunt, Chris Pratt and Alison Brie. Rated R (Non-graphic sex and some cursing). Running time: 124 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

Today’s young people have difficulty settling down, or at least the two young people in The Five-Year Engagement do. Tom (Jason Segal) and Violet (Emily Blunt) are madly in love with each other, so why the delay? Why not just tie the knot already? The popular notion seems to be that their generation wants everything to be just right. They want to make sure their mate is really The One, and if so, they want the absolute best for their special, unique love.

Older generations, such as the parents and grandparents of Tom and Violet, can’t understand this. They got hitched young, made the best of it and were happy enough. Where’s the romance in waiting? But there is romance in Tom and Violet’s relationship. Their song, for example, is Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love,” about as close as there is to a definitive romantic soundtrack.

Tom is a typical Jason Segal character – kind, sensitive, a little oafish – and Violet is his admiring British companion, a real sweetheart who seeks a career in academia. They still flirt, joke and have good sex but life keeps getting in the way of their actual wedding. There is always some reason or another to extend their engagement and postpone the ceremony.

The first of these postponements results from an irresistible career opportunity for Violet. She has been accepted to a two-year research program for psychology but the job is in Michigan, quite a ways away from their home in San Francisco. No worries, says Tom. They can put off the wedding for a couple of years and get married when they come back to the Bay Area.

But this means Tom has to set aside his culinary career – he is a sous-chef for a swanky restaurant – and settle for making fat sandwiches for college students in Michigan. He doesn’t mind though, really, he swears. He’s willing to compromise for the love of his life. Of course, as the reality of two years settles in, Tom becomes less and less patient.

Meanwhile, Tom’s future best man (a wonderfully doofy Chris Pratt) and Violet’s sister (Alison Brie) hook up and before they know it, they’re on the married-with-children fast track. They offer Tom and Violet a constant reminder of the still-engaged couple’s lack of progress down the same path.

The Five-Year Engagement has a nice heart but is a bit long and overstuffed with side characters, which is to say it is a standard Judd Apatow-produced film. In addition to the in-laws there are friends, co-workers, bosses and acquaintances, all played by talented comedic actors and Apatow regulars. The movie has funny moments but the best of these have an off-the-cuff, ad-libbed feel, a testament to the strength of its likable cast. The more screwball shtick – including an incident with a crossbow and another involving the lewd use of deli meats – is less successful and mostly passes by without leaving much of an impression.

But jokes are only part of a romantic-comedy and the majority of The Five-Year Engagement focuses on the ups and downs of Tom and Violet’s relationship. Unfortunately, the script, written by Jason Segal and director Nicholas Stoller, who previously collaborated on the very funny Forgetting Sarah Marshall and last year’s charming revamp of The Muppets, never digs deeper than sitcom-level insights. Tom and Violet have a lot of long, serious talks about the state of their relationship and plodding through these scenes with Mr. Segal and Mrs. Blunt sometimes gives the viewer the uncanny feeling of actually being a part of one of these insufferable conversations.

As it turns out, Tom and Violet learn that their love is not necessarily as special or unique as they may have once thought. Many people have gotten married before them and many more will get married after them. The Five-Year Engagement effectively illustrates this revelation by not being an especially unique or memorable romantic-comedy. There are awkward wedding reception toasts, infidelities, break-ups and make-ups, some Apple product placement and a few fine uses of Van Morrison’s music. Assuming you follow the movie’s moral about settling for the less-than-spectacular, you should be happy enough with this movie.

- Steve Avigliano, 4/29/12

REVIEW: Get Him to the Greek

Get Him to the Greek (2010): Dir. Nicholas Stoller. Written by: Nicholas Stoller (based on characters created by Jason Segel). Starring: Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Sean "Diddy" Combs. Rated R (strong sexual content and drug use throughout, and pervasive language). Running time: 109 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

Aldous Snow, the scene-stealing British rocker from 2008’s Judd Apatow-produced film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (also directed by Nicholas Stoller), returns in a loose spin-off of that film that builds off comedian Russell Brand’s wonderful parody of the womanizing frontman and delves deeper – sort of – into the life of the fictional rockstar.

Get Him to the Greek finds Aldous Snow at a low-point in his career after a misguided foray in political music yields the offensive bomb of a single, “African Child (Trapped in Me).” Snow’s failure, however, provides Aaron Green, an intern for Pinnacle Records and longtime fan of Snow’s music, with an opportunity to resurrect his favorite artist’s career. Green (played by Jonah Hill) pitches the idea of a comeback concert for Snow to his boss (Sean “Diddy” Combs) so that the record label can commemorate the ten-year anniversary of Snow’s famous concert at the Greek Theatre and cash in on the CD re-releases of Snow’s back catalog. The label agrees and gives Green 72 hours to fly to London and get Snow back to L.A. for the show.

The set-up is a little forced, as though it were constructed to be neatly summarized in a 3-minute trailer – or perhaps a poster’s tagline – but once the proceedings get going, the film delivers good on its high-concept promise. As Green struggles to get Snow on time to the concert, we’re treated to a series of inspired party montages that breathe new life into sex and vomit gags… I mean that as a genuine compliment. For all its crudeness though, Get Him to the Greek also has an unfortunate reliance on sentimental sitcom-quality drama. Green’s storyline is a tired moving-away-from-home-for-his-girlfriend’s-career conflict and even rocker Aldous Snow can’t escape the film’s tendency towards trite drama. When Snow reconnects with his child near the end of the film, the tone is unclear and we’re unsure if the moment is meant to be a funny or a genuine one. Where other Apatow-produced affairs deftly blend comedy with heartfelt emotion, Get Him to the Greek isn’t as good a fit for that treatment. The film’s dramatic moments fail because Snow is too much of a caricature to show any real emotion and the cheating Green is too skeevy to muster any audience sympathy.

All these issues are rendered irrelevant, however, when the film lets Russell Brand loose in a fine comedic performance. Brand captures the air-headed rockstar persona, but his character’s insistent affection for that drug-addled lifestyle of meaningless hook-ups keeps the character an endearing nitwit and less like some of his more unlikable real-life counterparts. His confession to Green about why he continues his drug addiction (“I don’t have to worry about anything except drugs,” he says.) manages to be quite funny and maybe even a little poignant coming out of Brand’s mouth. Brand’s scenes are such breaths of fresh air, you wish the film had cut down on Jonah Hill’s character if only to give Brand more time for one-liners. Hill does fine in supporting roles (such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall), but he can’t quite hold his own when sharing the spotlight with Brand. There are some good supporting players though, such as Sean “Diddy” Combs’s quick-to-anger record label manager. Combs struggles in his first few scenes, but ultimately succeeds in his portrayal of an exaggerated music executive that stays just shy of the extreme territory tread by Tom Cruise’s Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder.

Brand’s excellent performance is complemented by a soundtrack of faux songs by Snow’s fictional band, Infant Sorrow. The songs – written by Brand, Sarah Marshall screenwriter Jason Segel, and a host of real musicians including Jarvis Cocker and Libertines-frontman Carl Barat – are skilled parodies of Killers-esque arena-rock anthems. One song, “Bangers, Beans & Mash,” is so convincing, it might be mistaken for an Oasis b-side in a different context. Another, entitled “Going Up,” features emphatically delivered lines such as, “Like a dog who’s gone insane, you’re putting me down, down down,” and “African Child” is a wonderful send-up of the rockstar-gone-political. We even get the Lady Gaga-imitation pop icon, Jackie Q, whose vulgar dance lyrics are less than subtle. Still, these songs aren’t as strong as the ingenious Dracula puppet-opera from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and they pale too in comparison to another Apatow-produced film, Walk Hard, whose songs were so well written, they almost held their own against the Johnny Cash originals they parodied.

There’s plenty of ripe material for a satire on the music industry, but Get Him to the Greek never points its gun at the fans who worship morons like Snow or the media that propagates them, preferring instead to use the extravagant rockstar lifestyle as a launching pad for raunchy comedy. More might have been done with the Snow character, but the film is an earnest comedy and you can’t fault a film for setting its sights low when it hits its target fine.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/10/10

REVIEW: Funny People

Funny People (2009): Written and Directed by Judd Apatow. Starring: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Eric Bana, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman. Rated R (language and crude sexual humor throughout, and some sexuality). Running time: 146 min.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

Funny People is about the competitive brotherhood of stand-up comedians and the world of raunchy conversations and part-time jobs that exist in between gigs. Funny People is about a comedic superstar forced to reexamine his life of empty fame after being diagnosed with a form of leukemia. Funny People is about a man who, twelve years after the fact, tries to get back the love of his life despite her new husband and family. The third film from writer/director/producer-extraordinaire Judd Apatow could lay claim to any of the above descriptions, but in actuality Funny People tries to be all of these things at once, ultimately becoming overlong and underdeveloped in the process.

Despite virtually unanimous acclaim for his first two films (The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up), the one note of criticism made of both was that they could benefit from some editing. Even films such as Pineapple Express and Superbad, which bear Apatow’s name under a producer credit, could sacrifice some minutes. Almost in defiance of these criticisms, he has delivered a film more in need of condensing than any of his previous efforts. In trying to fill the movie with an ambitious plot, Apatow delivers a film that is comedically successful but dramatically uneven.

The scenes of three young stand-up comedians/roommates (Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman) are standard Apatowian fare: male bonding, sex talk and pop-culture references. Their one-liners and banter are as funny as anything you’ll hear this year, along with some great excerpts of stand-up routines. The movie also has great fun with a fake TV show, “Yo Teach!” starring Schwartzman’s character. Rogen in particular is hilarious as Ira Wright, a shyer, less confidant version of the character he played in Knocked Up, scoring laughs from subtleties and character details in addition to his jokes.

The heart of Funny People however, lies with Adam Sandler’s performance as former stand-up comedian turned superstar, George Simmons. Simmons, we learn from posters and clips of fake movies, has built an immensely successful career on dumb comedies like Merman (self-explanatory) and Re-Do (about a man turned into a baby). By poking fun at Sandler’s own career as a film comedian, these self-references lend credibility to the character, giving strength to the more emotional moments that come later. After a positive reaction to Ira’s stand-up, Simmons takes him on as an assistant, apprentice and confidant to his medical secret. Scenes between Sandler and Rogen are particularly good in the way they depict a man who is very good at subverting his fears with laughter.

Following a few revelations in the face of death, a process expedited through use of montages, Simmons decides the one part of his life most in need of fixing is his romantic life. None of the girls in his long line of one-night stands compare to his almost-wife from years before, Laura (the irresistible Leslie Mann). In this last leg of the film, we get some very funny scenes featuring Eric Bana as a cheerfully pompous Australian businessman. When the film tries to wrap up a complicated situation into a neat finale, its Bana’s delightfully absurd monologue about lessons learned during his trips to China that masks the strings Judd Apatow is carefully pulling as screenwriter.

This tidy ending comes as something of a disappointment following The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, neither of which relied on contrivances. Those films remained, excluding occasional tangents for the sake of a good joke, focused on the main storyline. They used side characters to populate the films’ worlds, but never lost sight of the central characters. Each of those films also offered surprisingly good-natured morals as solutions to the complexities of their characters’ lives. For The 40-Year-Old Virgin it was their choice to wait until marriage; for Knocked Up, it was the decision to raise the baby in spite of the challenges. The ending of Funny People places a similar importance on family ideals, but never makes a strong argument for what happens.

On a scene-by-scene basis, Funny People works, but as a whole film it is unfocused, failing to deliver one cohesive message, but instead a collection of ideas that linger in the air as the credits roll. And yet the film is consistently enjoyable on the strength of its sharp comedic writing and winning performances. That shouldn’t come as a surprise though: these are, after all, very, very funny people.

- Steve Avigliano, 8/03/09