The best movie marketing campaigns are those that capture a film’s essence in a simple poster or catchy tagline. In the case of The Five-Year Engagement, the new comedy starring Jason Segel and Emily Blunt, the film’s poster is perfect to a grave fault. Featuring Blunt in her wedding dress with her slipper-covered feet on a coffee table and Segel with a robe over his tuxedo, it is their expressions that epitomize the feelings related to viewing the film. For Blunt, it’s the look of “you’ve got to be kidding me…” while Segel presents a “is it over yet?” demeanor of despair.

Written by Segel and long-time collaborator Nicholas Stoller, who also directed the film, The Five-Year Engagement feels like one of those Saturday Night Live skits that work well in a five-minute short, but are a disaster when stretched into a feature-length film.

It’s Tom (Segel) and Violet’s (Blunt) one year anniversary from the time they first meet each other that fateful New-Year’s Eve in San Francisco. While driving Violet to the designated romantic setting where he is planning to propose to her, Tom cracks under the pressure of her questions and spoils the surprise. Yet, despite the slight curve in the road, they are able to go through the eventful evening as if it were still a surprise, with Violet ultimately saying “yes.” It appears to be another heart-melting love story in the making, with both parties as happy as they have ever been.

That is until Violet is accepted into a two-year postdoctoral program in social psychology at the University of Michigan. Willing to do anything for Violet, Tom gives up the opportunity to be head-chef at a prestigious new seafood restaurant and moves to Michigan, where the only job he can find is as a sandwich artist at the local Zingerman’s Deli. As more time passes, the more the couple postpones their wedding until “the time is right.” And while the resentment grows in Tom from Viola’s success and both set of parents desperately pushing to get the knot tied already, the couple must figure out if their love can prevail through the challenges or if there is a reason why they keep prolonging the ceremony.

After being the creative talents behind such movies as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek and last year’s hit The Muppets, Segel and Stoller were on a roll. With Hollywood’s hottest comedy producer, Judd Apatow, overseeing Engagement, the stars seemed to be aligning for another potential Bridesmaids like hit. Unlike Bridesmaids though, this movie is an excruciatingly, drawn-out example of how an amusing series of events in real-life can be over-thought and hard to translate into comedic fiction.

Apatow’s brand has always been based around making raunchy movies with heart. While Engagement’s heart is ever-so wonderfully present in the first and last 15-minutes of the film, the middle hour-and-a-half contains only sprinkles of raunchiness and even fewer truly funny moments. Scenes and jokes are stretched to such painfully long lengths (think Family Guy cutaways); it often seems the editor fell asleep on the job. On top of that, minor jokes such as “it’s so cold out, it’s going to look like I have a baby’s penis” are reused way past their welcome.

As actors, Segel and Blunt have just the right amount of cute awkwardness that makes them fun to watch, but lack the charisma of people like Steve Carell and Jim Carrey to carry a film that is deficient in script. Working with Engagement’s overlong screenplay, the awkwardness for the acting duo turns into a sense of misery for their characters. A respectable, hardworking Segel first transforms into a sullen, underappreciated deli-worker, then to a Grizzly Adams mountain man who lives to hunt, and finally into an ordinary guy living with a girl he doesn’t love during the typical “boy and girl break-up do to one’s stupidity act”; an expected regularity of the clichéd romantic-comedy formula. Through all the depression and triteness there is an amusing crossbow accident, a failed attempt at getting nasty in the kitchen and plenty of drunken dialogues to lighten the mood.

Still, the charismatic scenes are not pungent enough to hold up the movie’s tumbling moments (of which there are many). And while Tom struggles to find his purpose as Violet excels in her psychology program, creating experiments that involve a correlational to commitment and whether people will eat stale doughnuts or wait for new ones, we start to see that the baked goods are not the only thing that is decayed and old. Thankfully though, viewers never have to question the undeniable chemistry between the two leads. Even if Segel is your average Joe blow — tall, a bit chubby, and endearingly awkward — the beautiful, slender, and self-confident Violet seems perfectly content with her big, orgasm-faking teddy bear. And after Forgetting Sarah Marshall where he bared his heart, soul and penis, Segel has definitely earned some respect from the ladies.

As great as they are together, most of the laughs don’t come from the leads, but from their interactions with the supporting, scene-stealing cast. It is here that we finally see TV’s Community star Alison Brie, as Violet’s sister, performing her magic. Working the emotionally unstable role, Brie draws some of the biggest laughs of the film during her blubbering bridal-shower speech and an unforgettable argument in which she and Blunt yell using the voices of Elmo and the Cookie Monster to make it appear to the kids like they aren’t really fighting. Parks and Recreations funnyman Chris Pratt also appears as Segel’s revolting best man, but his overacting as a horny moron never clicks with the film.

In the scheme of effective romantic comedies, The Five-Year Engagement can easily be classified as a blown opportunity. More so a terrifying look into the consequences of prolonging an already stressful stage of relationships than a humorous glimpse at one couple’s troubles, the film is, at times, as enjoyable as having to choose between traditional white or shale colored invitation paper stock.

Rating: 1 out of 4 stars

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