‘The Five-Year Engagement’

I am thankful to the comedy gods 2012 is a Judd Apatow year. That means a thoughtful, gut-busting comedy like “The Five-Year Engagement,” produced by Apatow and written by Jason Siegel and Nicholas Stoller (the team behind 2008’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) will bring with it the laughs and clarity lacking in at least 90 percent of the other comedies being released this year.

Like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “The Five-Year Engagement” centers on a good, clean premise on which a slew of superbly executed comedic vegetation can grow wildly.

Tom  (Jason Segal) and Violet (Emily Blunt) are in love and decide after just a year of dating it is time to get married. Tom is a successful sous chef and Violet is a graduate of psychology who receives news of her acceptance into a post-doctorate program at the University of Michigan. The program lasts two years, so Tom agrees to move to Michigan so Violet can pursue this career opportunity. In the process, they decide to delay the wedding a few years.

Before they know it, more and more obstacles pile up, delaying Tom and Violet’s marriage to the point where some of the more elderly relatives start dying off, to the utter dismay of Violet’s British mother, Sylvia (Jacki Weaver). Tom’s best friend, Alex (Chris Pratt), even ends up impregnating and marrying Violet’s sister, Suzie (Alison Brie), but for a number of reasons, the wedding just cannot seem to come to fruition. A long engagement it is.

As always, Segal and Blunt truly shine on screen, and they each bring a sincere comic appeal to the film. They are surrounded by a sizable array of equally talented actors including Brie, Pratt and scene-stealer Chris Parnell, whose sweater-knitting hunter is one of the funniest characters in the movie. The only character who doesn’t quite ring true is Violet’s professor, Winton Childs, played by Rhys Ifans. There is a point in the film where I just couldn’t buy what was happening with this character, but aside from that, this is a terrific ensemble film.

With “The Five-Year Engagement,” Segal and Stoller shift from the agony of a breakup to focus on the fear of finally taking that big step into marriage, and the challenges that come with making the decision to spend the rest of your life with another person.

What is interesting about the writers’ approach to the subject is the way by which they subvert this issue beneath so many layers of excuses, denials and betrayals, so that Tom and Violet’s fear of advancing to the next stage in their relationship — the ultimate step — becomes lost amongst a series of somewhat superficial, and hilarious events that should not really delay a marriage from taking place.

Many of critics have claimed this to be the flaw of the movie, and to some extent it might be. Unlike Siegel and Stoller’s previous effort, not everything works this time around. A few scenes could have used a sharper re-write, and the story meanders a bit more than “Sarah Marshall.” But it is still safe to say once again they have crafted a memorable, funny comedy amongst a sea of forgettables.

★★★ (out of 4)

‘Cabin in the Woods’

Probably the most fun I have had at the movies since . . . I don’t know when, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s “The Cabin in the Woods” plays around with all the familiar, clichéd elements of the horror genre, molding them like clay into easily recognizable shapes before rolling over them with five hundred steam-rollers and, in the process, transcending the genre in a more creative and outrageous fashion than horror master Wes Craven was able to do back in 1996 with his postmodern-postmortem slasher flick, “Scream.”

What do five college students off for a sexed-up weekend getaway in a remote cabin in the middle of the woods have to do with two middle-aged government employees working in some kind of top-secret industrial facility for top-secret operations? Well, it is no spoiler to readers that the two technicians are monitoring the students through many hidden cameras for the newest top-secret project, and that the cabin itself is not meant for a relaxing weekend away from it all.

What is the project? To start off, each of the five students happens to fit nicely into a stereotypical kind of horror movie victim. There is Kurt the jock (Curt), Jules the slut (Anna Hutchinson), Dana the virgin (Kristin Connolly), Holden the nice guy (Jessie Williams) and Marty the pothead (Fran Kranz).

Meanwhile, the technicians (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) are manipulating their decisions, thought and even their sex-drives, all for the purposes of getting them down into the cabin cellar, where a crucial decision lies that will determine the eventual outcome of the operation.

I dare not say more, plot wise, for fear of robbing future viewers of the experience of watching writers Whedon and Goddard aggressively tear down every single wall that horror filmmakers have built over the years. I will say the final third of “The Cabin in the Woods” is a showstopper, both a monumental black eye and a sweet embrace of the horror genre by two guys who love it to pieces — literally. Some bloodshed certainly is not out of the question.

Although a lover of great horror — I’m perpetually in the middle of a Stephen King novel — there most likely are many references and inside jokes I missed, but horror fans must gather round for this exciting and refreshing deconstruction of the genre.

★★★ 1/2 (out of 4)