Nicholas Stoller's inventive, funny, and sometimes subversive romantic comedy won't revive that benighted genre, but it does offer hope. Take the premise: Tom and Violet (Jason Segel and Emily Blunt) get engaged but then must move from San Francisco to Michigan to further the career of one at the expense of the other. Sounds familiar, but the loser this time is the man, not the woman — a talented chef, Tom defers to Violet's wish to attend graduate school and become a clinical psychologist. He puts his ambitions, and the wedding, on hold — not for the last time— until in one of many hilarious elliptical cuts Tom has deteriorated into a freak with muttonchops hunting deer with a crossbow. Adept at mixing raunchy comedy, inspired shtick (as in two sisters arguing in front of the kids as Cookie Monster and Elmo), and insight into the pathology of relationships, the film's biggest flaw is its length — it should be about 18 months shorter.
