Universal’s “The Five-Year Engagement” kicked off the 11th Tribeca Film Festival on April 18, giving the pic’s co-writer/director Nicholas Stoller the opportunity to make a truly memorable intro speech from the stage of the Ziegfeld Theater. After expressing his appreciation to fest founders Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro, he went on to thank “my producer, the beautiful Judd Apatow” and his co-writer and the pic’s co-star, Jason Segel, as the man “without whose penis none of us would be here tonight!”
As laughter erupted from the aud, Stoller added, “This is serious; you’re about to learn something about comedy, romance and love. Marriage is a three-ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, suffering.”
However, the pic’s Emily Blunt certified that she isn’t suffering in her matrimonial union with John Krasinski. “I definitely lucked out,” she said at the elaborate MoMA bash afterward, “because I think a lot of people maybe stumble across their other half. I do feel in that rather soppy way that I was fated to have met ‘my one,’ I guess.”
Rosenthal sees “Engagement” as continuing a Tribeca trend, noting, “We started the festival after 9/11, and in the Year One we did ‘About a Boy.’ Humor brings people together in ways you can’t predict.”
According to U’s Adam Fogelson, the Apatow brand travels overseas. “If we can get it to be a hit here, the rest of the world will focus on it,” he said, noting that U’s latest “American Pie” reunion comedy “will do three times overseas what it does here.”
