Almost every comedy features a supporting cast of hilarious actors who can always be wheeled in front a camera to produce laughs. Unlike the romantic leads, who have to undergo a journey and serve plot functions, these characters can literally be poorly developed and have little motivations of their own – and no one minds as long as they make us chortle in delight.
“The Five-Year Engagement” does a very peculiar thing with its characters. Tom and Violet, the betrothed played by Jason Segel and Emily Blunt doomed to suffer the titular delay, are the ones who suffer from the pratfalls of the supporting characters. Sure, the two have chemistry and are fun to watch. But it’s Jason Segel and Emily Blunt, both of whom could charm a dishwasher into marrying them!
I definitely enjoyed the two of them in their playful engagement bliss and when they got into tough arguments; however, they got upstaged, outdrawn, and outshown in a major way by the couple that was supposed to be a comic relief and foil. Guess that means directors need to think twice before they cast the uproarious Chris Pratt (who steals every “Parks and Recreation” episode these days) and dynamic Alison Brie (who I’ve heard is just as good on “Community”).
Pratt plays Tom’s best friend Alex, who is of course the usual Pratt goofball (unless we are talking “Moneyball“). At the engagement party, he meets Brie’s sharp-tongued Suzie … who also happens to be Violet’s sister. The two have quite a night, and very quickly, a very different kind of wedding is on the horizon. A shotgun wedding.
Alex and Suzie provide most of the humor for Nicholas Stoller’s “The Five-Year Engagement” because of Pratt and Brie’s immense comedic capabilities. Yet they also carry most of the heart of the film, too. As Stoller’s running commentary on how hard marriage really is no matter how long and hard you’ve worked on it, I started rooting for them and becoming more emotionally invested in the two of them. Perhaps it’s because the marathon length of the film left me craving Alex or Suzie to get back on screen, but I think it was really just me wishing someone would make one of these movies with Chris Pratt as the leading man. B / 
Marshall and the Movies 
Wow, I thought this was very poor for the same reasons you found it good. I found Brie to be cringeworthingly unfunny and her husband didn’t fare much better. In fact, I found the whole movie desperately trying too hard to be funny. There were some moments but few. For such scant laughs the film was unforgivably long.
Agree with you on the length, and can’t believe I forgot to mention it in the review. It just went on and on and on….