The Five-Year Engagement

 

Teen rom-coms have a built-in fantasy that serves them well in a way their adult counterparts have difficulty in addressing.  They are more likely to deal with the seeming temporary nature of whatever notion of “true love” the main characters find, either directly (all those conversations about “what are we going to do next year”) or indirectly (the audience knows this is a childish lark, but that instills in it a certain innocence – I’d argue that in some ways it’s the lack of a future that gives the genre its power).  This is partially why screenwriters tend to skip the college years and move onto the lonely, Type A personality workaholic female looking for love.  Her life is figured out, so the movie need only concern itself with slotting that one piece of the puzzle into place to get the “Happily Ever After”.  This is all broadly speaking, and I can think of several counter-examples that might be worth examining further, but on a whole, I think there is truth to it, and it is necessary to understand this when approaching the really good aspects of The Five-Year Engagement.   

How Do You Know

Perhaps it is unfair to expect more from James L. Brooks.  His romantic comedies have generally been delightful but they are often far from transcending the genre.  They elevate themselves primarily by being wittier and sometimes cleverer than the norm, but they’re hardly great, indispensable films.  I have a certain affection for As Good As It Gets and while I didn’t care for it at the time, Kent Jones’ writing has convinced me that Spanglish might be worth another look (Tea Leoni’s mad performance stood out even then, and is perhaps worth reconsidering).  How Do You Know is slight, meandering, a little too long, vaguely enjoyable and only very occasionally “funny”.  It is an “adult” rom-com only when you compare it to every other mainstream rom-com released in recent years, and that is a sobering thought that those even those of us who love easy entertainments might find hard to swallow.