Review: The Five-Year Engagement

After watching The Five-Year Engagement you may feel like you've sat through at least 2 or 3 of those years - which is a shame as there's a good film lost somewhere underneath a gruelling runtime that goes over 2 hours for no good reason.

As a result of the length, the film just doesn't feel funny enough, with the gaps between laughs too long and no real drama to hold your attention in between.

On the plus side the cast are all likeable and in particular Emily Blunt and Jason Segel have a great chemistry as the lead couple - bit odd to see Rhys Ifans play another Professor so soon after Spider-Man, the sliminess is more metaphorical this time around instead of his reptilian turn in the superhero story.

Often you get comedies promoting uncut versions for DVD and Blu-Ray release, in the case of The Five-Year Engagement - a version with 30 minutes cut would arguably be a superior effort.

Review: Bad Teacher

The problem with Bad Teacher is it just isn't funny, with no real jokes to speak of throughout its 90 minutes of screen time. Instead the film just seems to rely on the premise that Cameron Diaz swearing is funny to try and get its laughs from the audience. Unsurprisingly this weak attempt fails.

Jason Segel pops up at random points to set up the predictable happy ending, but the writers seem to have forgotten to get Diaz to do anything vaguely redeeming to get to that point - I'm not sure her character framing an innocent teacher whose boyfriend she tried to steal is quite the 'journey' the makers seem to think it is.

Bad Teacher certainly lives up to the first part of its title - this is one of the worst films I have seen in a while.