It’s nice when a movie has such an informative title, and this one, like the movie it describes, is amusing while also being realistically descriptive. I’d hoped it would relate to a minor but persistent flaw I see in so many romantic comedies, which is that the happy couple always seem to be able to organize an elaborate wedding for 200 within weeks. Here Violet (Emily Blunt) and Tom (Jason Segel) get engaged at the start of the movie, but upon making arrangements Violet is told that her preferred facility has no open dates for three years—unless she’d like to book for September 11. She would not. However, as with a few other recent romantic comedies—or perhaps comedy-drama would better fit the tone here—the real source of the couple’s difficulties is career options, and geography. Tom is an aspiring chef in San Francisco, but Violet’s opportunity lies in Ann Arbor, MI. Her field is social psychology. (You don’t see that so often in films.)
Written by Segal and director Nicholas Stoller, the team behind Forgetting Sarah Marshall (and the recent Muppets revival), it has a mostly realistic feel to it with only the occasional dick joke. (Decent ones, actually.) The assorted side characters are mostly recognizable from TV sitcoms, include Chris Pratt and Alison Brie as the best friend and sister, respectively, of the two leads. At the engagement party, Pratt’s character sings an altered version of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” to an accompanying slide show of Tom’s previous girlfriends. However, this is about as broadly comic as the film gets. Several of the scenes are purely dramatic. Although I don’t find Blunt and Segal to be an ideal on-screen couple, their disagreements are pretty well done. The movie is just over two hours, but the ending is abrupt.
IMDb link
viewed 5/20/12 1:35 pm at Riverview and reviewed 5/20–21/12
No comments:
Post a Comment