Review of Failure to Launch (2006) by Markb. — 27 Mar 2006

The obvious instant rebuttal to this romantic comedy's just-asking-for-it title would be, "It never gets off the ground", but that's neither the case nor the problem. It really does life off quite pleasingly, and stays airborne for a period of time before imploding in a variety of ways and crashing.

You certainly can't fault the casting director: Matthew McConaughey, who along with Kate Hudson elevated a similarly unsavory premise a few years ago into the surprisingly watchable How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, is one of the most easygoing, likable leading men onscreen today, while Sarah Jessica Parker is normally so appealing and engaging that she pulled a nifty bit of subterfuge this past Christmas, making a character in The Family Stone that the author clearly didn't like and didn't want us to either into the most sympathetic figure in the picture.

Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw maintain an extremely pleasant, old-shoe rapport as slacker Tripp's (McConaughey's) longsuffering parents: you really do believe that these folks have been married for decades, and an extra pat on the back to the casting director for picking asctors with accents to complement McConaughey's.

As for Zooey Deschanael as Parker's cynical but lonely roommate, she's so hilariously and charmingly deadpan, and brings so much originality and heart into the mix that I regretted the indie film featuring this actress as this character that's never going to be made.

(Her bit with the gun store clerk is the unquestioned highlight of this movie.) It's obvious that Failure to Launch's "hook"-- the meeting of Parker, playing a woman who's hired by the parents of thirtysomethings who still haven't moved out of the house to use romance and sex to lure their male offspring into leaving the nest, and McConaughey, as one of those emotionally stunted overgrown adolescents who uses the fact that he's still living at home as enablement to his commitmentphobia, scaring away women who get too close by literally bringing them to meet Mom and Dad--is flawed both logically (wouldn't at least a couple of McConaughey's women have insisted on going to his place earlier in the relationship?) and ethically (in essence, isn't Parker's character a whore, the men she attracts her unwitting johns, and their parents her pimps?) But the performers and some good dialogue make this an acceptable Tradeoff Movie--guys willingly take their spouses or significant others to it one weekend as a tradeoff for said ladies accompanying them to V For Vendetta or an auto show the next--up to a point.

The first cracks in the fissure occur with a really dumb, misguided series of sight gags in which McConaughey is repeatedly attacked by various flying, swimming and scampering creatures; the problems continue when writers Tom Astle and Matt Ember insist on shoehorning in some unconvincing Serious Explanations for McConaughey's and Parker's aberrant behavior that are so perfunctory that they were better off not being included in the first place.

But the edifice collapses completely and irreparably when, in the interest of moving the plot, the movie shows us more details of Parker plying her trade than we needed to see. I never thought I'd be using the words "Sarah Jessica Parker" and "loathsome" in the same sentence, but midway through we see her hustling one of her other victims--a Star Wars geek who's so sad and pathetic, and just breaks your heart when he asks Parker not to leave him (he does this not once but twice!)--that we see just how utterly despicable and indefensible Parker's chosen profession is, and that the parents hiring her for it should be brought to justice for some sort of adult/ child abuse.

The movie gets more and more contrived and desperate from here on, reaching the point of no return with what Joe Bob Briggs might've called the Gratuitous Nekkid Terry Bradshaw Footage (three, count 'em three, shots of his naked ass that only serve to prove that he shouldn't spend much time waiting by the phone for those jeans-endorsement people to call).

The Washington Post's Stephen Hunter is truly one of the most perceptive film critics in the country (besides being an excellent writer of thriller novels) but his favorable comparison of this thing with the films of Billy Wilder--perhaps because of a few well-timed lines and the fact that the principals here, like those in Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd.

and The Apartment eventually come to realize some of the consequences of their actions--only serves to indicate just how far we've slid from Wilder's heyday and how sorely he's missed.