>>REVIEW
FAILURE TO LAUNCH
STARRING Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew McConaughey, Kathy Bates, Terry Bradshaw, Zooey Deschanel, Bradley Cooper, Justin Bartha
DIRECTED BY Tom Dey
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There’s something warm, familiar and comforting about returning to the place where you grew up – until you’ve been there for a week, your mother keeps asking you when you’re going to "meet someone nice" and your father insists that you find a decent job.
And then there are some people who pass this off as a minor inconvenience to reap the benefits of living with their folks. And by "some people," I mean mostly men – a very unattractive quality to any woman in a relationship post-teens. This is the premise of Failure to Launch. Tired of living with their 35-year-old son Tripp (Matthew McConaughey), Sue (Kathy Bates) and Al (Terry Bradshaw) are hell-bent on driving him out of the house. To do so, they enlist the help of a professional named Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker), who woos live-at-home men for a living and eventually convinces them to move out of their parents’ homes.
Alas, Tripp isn’t like the Star Wars obsessed, socially awkward clients Paula usually works with and as she starts to fall for him, her hands-off attitude towards her work becomes compromised.
As romantic comedies go, this one is surprisingly witty and slightly off-the-wall – not what you’d typically expect from the World’s Sexiest Man Alive and Ms. Carrie Bradshaw. But McConaughey, with his southern confidence and swaggering charm, is really just playing himself. And although Parker manages to make the role her own, without any resemblance to the character she is best known for, the two A-listers are largely forgettable.
It is the supporting cast of Paula’s best friend Kit (Zooey Deschanel) and Tripp’s buddies Demo (Bradley Cooper) and Ace (Justin Bartha) that lift the movie from the typically cheesy depths occupied by romantic comedies. Deschanel draws laughs with her depressive monotone and her relentless mission to kill the mockingbird outside her window contributes to her very major lack of sleep and her even surlier attitude. Both Cooper and Bartha offer comedic relief from McConaughey’s straight man – Cooper as a cute but awkward computer geek and Bartha as a granola-eating yoga-ite obsessed with his body. Like Tripp, they, too, still live at home and feel no shame in their situations. Bates and NFL legend Bradshaw are hilarious as Tripp’s parents, a couple who clearly love one another but are frightened at the thought of getting to know each other all over again when their son leaves the nest.
Although some scenes are ridiculous, some cheesy and some contrived, if you’re willing to overlook these minor failures, Failure to Launch offers a welcome respite in the form of sweet romantic fun. |
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