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"The Five-Year Engagement" is a romantic comedy with heart - and laughs.
That should go without saying, but too many rom-coms these days refuse to take any risks.
Directed by Nicholas Stoller from a script he wrote with star Jason Segel, "Engagement" is a wacky, too wacky occasionally, look at what you go through for love and the surprises that any relationship brings.
Segel plays Tom, a San Francisco chef whose plan to propose to his girlfriend, Violet (Emily Blunt), quickly goes awry but in a charming way. Everything about the couple is charming; so it's easy to root for them. But from the title, you know their road together is not going to be easy.
When Violet, a research psychologist, gets a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan, Tom amiably agrees to move with her to Ann Arbor. He thinks he can pick up his own promising career there. The trouble is fancy restaurants in a college town are not in high demand, and the only job Tom can get is working at a fast-food restaurant.
A good sport again, he dutifully tries to become part of Violet's world but finds he has little in common with the academics and eventually finds himself palling around with Bill, a sadsack stay-at-home husband amusingly played by Chris Parnell.
In fact, "Engagement" is stacked with funny offbeat characters.
Brian Posehn is a "pickle nerd." Mindy Kaling, Kevin Hart and Randall Park play Violet's overly competitive cohorts in the psych department, which is run by a likable, but suspiciously too likeable, professor (Rhys Ifans). If you've only seen Alison Brie on "Mad Men," the actress shows she's got plenty of comedic chops as Violet's loopy impetuous sister. And Chris Pratt, of "Parks and Recreation," has a nice turn as Tom's dense, but not so dense, friend.
Some of the humor in the film is pretty outrageous. There is bloodletting and loss of digits. This, after all, comes from the Judd Apatow school of comedy, and some of the gags go on a bit too long.
But at a bit more than two hours it also allows the audience to see into Tom and Violet's problems. It's not just about love - the couple has plenty of that - but it's about coping with the difficulties of modern life.
The bottom line is that "Engagement" brings some soul with its jokes. You can tell by the music, which is mostly supplied by the great Van Morrison.
Box-set wizardry
For "Harry Potter" fans who want to supersize, there is the "Harry Potter Wizard's Collection," a 31-disc box set that includes both the theatrical and special-edition versions of all eight films plus hours and hours of extras and a 32-page book that includes labels from potions, memory vials, Honeydukes and Wheasley's Wheezes.
Otherwise, the week - as is usual this time of year - is dominated with box sets of last season's TV shows, including the eighth season of ABC's warhorse "Grey's Anatomy," the fourth season of Fox's sci-fi thriller "Fringe," and the third and final seasons of both "Bored to Death" and "Hung." Those two comedies from HBO bordered on the strange, but they were fairly amusing most of the time.
There is also the first season of CBS' "Person of Interest," with its mysterious protagonist played by Jim Caviezel and its high-tech premise. By the season's end, I was still waiting for the show to kick in.
And while I've yet to be as enthralled by CBS' "The Good Wife" as plenty of others are, the third season is available.
Keep in mind
The 1971 film "A New Leaf," which starred Walter Matthau and Elaine May, is one of those small comic gems that is in constant need of being rediscovered.
Matthau plays a snobbish, callous New Englander named Henry Graham who has run through his inheritance. His only hope of being able to maintain his extravagant lifestyle is to marry a rich woman in six weeks. The only available candidate, it turns out, is a shy, clueless heiress named Henrietta, played by May, who also directed. She is a bookish botanist, who in Henry's words needs to be vacuumed after every time she eats.
Though repellent to her, he tries his best to woo her anyway. "The only difference between us is I am a man and you are a woman and we don't have to let that interfere if we are reasonably careful," he tells her, planning to dispatch her after they are married.
Matthau and May are delightfully funny, and the film has this gentle off-kilter quality about it that few comedies today attain.
New films
The Five-Year Engagement $29.98/ Blu-ray $34.98
Safe $29.95/ Blu-ray $39.99
Piranha 3DD $24.98/ Blu-ray $29.99
Woman Thou Art Loosed: On the 7th Day $19.97/ Blu-ray $29.99
Television
Grey's Anatomy: The Complete Eighth Season $45.99
Fringe: The Complete Fourth Season $59.98/ Blu-ray $69.97
Criminal Minds: The Seventh $55.98
Person of Interest: Season One $59.98/ Blu-ray $69.97
The Good Wife: The Third Season $55.98
The Office: Season 8 $49.98/ Blu-ray $59.98
Parks and Recreation: Season Four $39.98
Haven: Complete Second Season $44.98/ Blu-ray $49.98
Ghost Adventures Season 4 $24.98
Hung: The Complete Third Season $39.98/ Blu-ray $49.99
Roseanne -- Season 5 $14.98
How to Make It in America: The Complete Second Season $39.98/ Blu-ray $49.99
Grounded for Life -- The Complete Series $44.98
2 Broke Girls: The Complete First Season Blu-ray $54.97
Bored to Death: The Complete Third Season $39.98/ Blu-ray $49.99
Older films
Harry Potter Wizard's Collection Blu-ray $499.99
Re-Animator Blu-ray $17.97
Hocus Pocus Blu-ray $26.50
A New Leaf $24.95/ Blu-ray $29.95
Megaforce $19.95
The Cabin In The Woods $14.99
The Navigator: Ultimate Edition Blu-ray $34.95
Hand That Rocks the Cradle: 20th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray $20
Umberto D. -- Criterion Collection Blu-ray $39.95
Sleepwalkers Blu-ray $17.97
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© 2012 the Daily News (Los Angeles)
