I’ve got some great coverage of “The Five-Year Engagement” coming for you in early 2012, and I am really looking forward to the film. Now, thanks to what I feel is a strong first trailer, you can get a look at what I’ve been waiting to talk about for a while now.
Jason Segel’s got to be feeling good these days about the reception to “The Muppets,” which he co-wrote with Nicholas Stoller. This, though, is much closer to “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” their first film together, and it’s a film that was Stoller’s passion project just as much as the Muppets represented a personal passion for Segel. I spent a day in San Francisco watching them work, right at the end of the shoot, and you’ll see a glimpse of the scene I was there for, the actual proposal that kicks off the movie. I saw a ton of footage from the film as well, and even in rough form, there were some great moments I saw.
Here, though, we’ve finally got our first polished look at material from the film, and I think this trailer does a lovely job of selling both the underlying idea about a young couple who experience a string of delays that prevent them from actually having their wedding, and I think it sells the tone as well as some of the more outrageous humor that punctuates their journey.
I spent time chatting with Chris Pratt on-set, as well as both Segel and Emily Blunt, and I walked away feeling fairly confident that they’ve made something special. Stoller’s a filmmaker who shoots a lot of material and who really spends time crafting the final film out of the various options he’s given himself. The final film could be any of several different films just depending on the way Stoller makes choices, because within one scene, I would watch them play it bigger, more subtle, louder, quieter, funnier, more serious… and each time, I could tell that Stoller and his producing partner, Rodney Rothman, are seriously considering each tweak, trying to find the best version of a scene.
If you, like me, are a fan of the uber-adorable Alison Brie, then you’ll see that this movie has figured out the one way to make her even more adorable: she’s playing Emily Blunt’s sister, and she studied Blunt’s accent carefully so they sound like they were raised in the same place. That’s right, gentlemen… Blunt’s accent… coming out of Alison Brie. You can start drafting your thank you letters to Stoller and Segel now.
And as broad as some of this stuff is in the trailer (that crossbow gag at the end of the trailer is a winner), there’s a very honest heart to the film, and I sincerely hope that the final version reflects the best intentions of all involved.
We’ll find out when “The Five-Year Engagement” opens on April 27, 2012.