Much of the dialogue in Nicholas Stoller’s The Five Year Engagement (2012) is strictly for adolescents.  It’s childishly raunchy.  Also, it’s a movie other people have found funnier than I have.

And yet . . . it’s not bad.

Tom (Jason Segel), a chef, and Violet (Emily Blunt), a psychology grad student, are forced into a five-year engagement–as they incur various problems–after Tom proposes marriage.  Besides some agreeable details in the script (by Stoller and Segel), what interests us is that this is one romantic comedy that takes romantic love seriously.  Such love truly exists between Tom and Violet, and the chemistry between Segel and Blunt is palpably good.  Blunt, by the way, is excellent; Segel passable.

The writing doesn’t always hold up, as when Tom all but loses it over Violet’s admission that a psych professor forced a kiss on her one night.  But Engagement, smutty as it is, has its charms.  And it has quite a cast–hooray for Alison Brie, but let’s see more David Paymer, please.

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 18: Actor Jason Segel walks the red carpet at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival at the Ziegfeld Theatre on April 18, 2012 in New York City. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)