Our wife and I finally got a babysitter so we could have a date night. My hopes to see the Avengers have been postponed so we could see the more neutral "The Five-Year Engagement".
What starts off as a fairly funny, unique, and endearing romantic comedy deviates in the middle of the movie to cliche story devices for this genre (cheat on each other, date other people, realize they just miss each other since breaking up.). Worse yet, this deviation lasts for a good half hour of the movie before the last 1/3 of the movie where they slowly trudge their way back to the originally funny and enjoyable pacing/conclusion.
This movie was a disappointment, only because it could have been a rare romantic comedy that delved into some interesting new ideas/struggles between the couple (Segel's character being an accomplished chef who sacrifices his dreams and home for his fiancee's opportunity to work in collegiate research, how well-laid plans change in the face of relationship struggles, the strain of learning to compromise with their fiancee when both have ambitious aspirations), but decided to use a cheap storytelling device for this genre, effectively adding a useless chunk of time where most people will probably be frustrated watching it.
This movie runs approx 2 hrs 15 mins. It deserves to be re-cut to run 1 hr 30 - 1 hr 45 mins.
7/10