Film Reviews

Failure To Launch

• Rating:
• Director: Tom Dey.
• Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Sarah Jessica Parker, Zooey Deschanel, Kathy Bates.
• Details:

Although fun-loving Tripp (McConaughey) is a boat broker, owns a sports car and is 35-years-old - he still lives at home. Liking nothing better than going biking and rock-climbing with his two best friends Demo (Bradley Cooper) and Ace (Justin Bartha) - who both live in their own parent's basements - and bedding beautiful women, Tripp enjoys the easy life. In an effort to get him out of the house, his parents (Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw) enlist the help of professional interventionist Paula (Parker) whose job it is to get men, who have a failure to launch, to fall in love with her and move out of the house - only for Paula to break up with them soon after. Everything goes according to plan until Paula starts to have feelings for the handsome, chiselled Tripp, which is the worst thing she can do for the commitment shy man-child. Failure To (make a decent romantic comedy) Launch lacks almost all the ingredients needed to make an (a) Romantic and (b) Comedy flick. McConaughey's Tripp, apart from his washboard stomach and a chin that could open a tin of beans, is so lacking in depth it is unbelievable that the level-headed Paula would fall for him as he has the same qualities as all her other clients. The awkward, staggering character development director Tom Dey throws at his leading man towards the end to give Tripp a little gravitas looks nothing more than a cheap afterthought. With various creatures - chipmunks, dolphins, lizards - jumping up to bite him every now and then to show that Tripp is at odds with nature (a fact that is spelt out ph-on-et-ic-all-y before the end) is a clumsy attempt to add a little slapstick humour. McConaughey is skating on thin ice with two misses (the other being Two For The Money) since his re-emergence from the wilderness last year while Parker, on the other hand, seems quiet content to coast along on her Sex And The City coattails as she (like in The Family Stone) gets to refer to her shoes more than once.

Review by Gavin Burke