
Writer-director Nicholas Stoller and co-writer/star Jason Segel located plenty of comedy in masculine doubt and the difficulty in climbing back up on the romantic saddle in their winning 2008 collaboration, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. A through line of thematic follow-up can be traced to their new work, The Five-Year Engagement, a comedy that attempts to chart the turbulent, churned-up period of personal development and possibly divergent professional paths between a young bethrothed couple’s pledge for marriage and eventual trip down the aisle. Alas, plenty of recognizable and game supporting players can’t save this bloated, hit-and-miss affair, which possesses the same basic nougaty center of ribaldry and sentimentality in which producer Judd Apatow specializes, but falls victim to a sagging hour-plus in its middle, as well as an ending which feels more the product of test-marketing approval than genuine romantic rallying. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, please click here. (Universal, R, 124 minutes)