Don’t get married

I kind of loathed The Five-Year Engagement. My review will run in LGBT Weekly next week, but it’s open now, so here’s a preview.

I’m currently getting divorced, so filmed engagements have started to irk me, and as I watched the opening scenes of The Five-Year Engagement, in which Tom (Jason Segel) fumbles through his proposal to Violet (Emily Blunt), I thought, “This is going to end in tears, you nitwits.” Sometimes a movie hits a little too close to home, and it’s hard to react to it as a critic when you’re so busy reacting to it as yourself. Of course, all criticism is personal, just as taste is, and all critics are idiosyncratic about what they like and what the hate. And so, I had a terrible time watching The Five-Year Engagement. I am fed up with the character Jason Segel has typecast himself as, and I found the script both absurd and retrograde, complete with offensive stock supporting characters and a subtly anti-feminist message. Continue…