Failure to Launch is a tidy little romantic comedy, a perfectly predictable made-for-TV movie – the sort you can see on the Lifetime cable channel any day of the week.

      But do you want to pay movie-theatre prices to see this kind of thing?

      The film’s premise is simple: 35-year-old Trip (Matthew McConaughey) lives in his parents’ home, apparently stuck in adolescence.  Desperate parents hire Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker) to romance their son, hoping to get him to move out.

      Given the premise, it takes no great creative intelligence to figure out what will happen.  Of course, Paula and Trip will fall in love.  Of course, the truth of their relationship will become an obstacle to that love.  Of course, all will be resolved satisfactorily.

      Both Trip and Paula follow well-practiced game plans to achieve their ends - and that’s one of the chief problems with this film.  Every step of their romance appears scripted, so neither the actors nor the audience has an emotional investment in the relationship. There is, quite simply, no discernible chemistry between McConaughey and Parker.

      McConaughey plays the kind of wisecracking-but-sensitive character he has done to better effect in movies such as The Wedding Planner and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, but here, he is either wisecracking or sensitive - never both.

      Worse yet, in wisecracking mode he is unlikable – a no-longer-young man who crows that he will never leave his parents’ home, whose recreational choices are those of a teenager (paintball, surfing, videogames), but who inexplicably succeeds at wooing a series of adult women, only to break up with them by bringing them home to meet the parents.

      Parker’s Paula comes across as much too intelligent and mature to fall for his shtick. Her “profession” of helping overgrown boys leave home involves “simulating” a romantic relationship for money; that she boasts “I never have sex with a client” makes it only slightly less unsavory.

      When the scheme comes out, Trip tells his parents, “If you wanted me out, all you had to do was ask.”  Indeed – the plot to force him to leave home seems unnecessarily complex.  Ironically, the film could have been better if another complication – a tragic past that generates more sympathy for Trip’s character – had been introduced much earlier.

      The absence of dramatic suspense is only partly compensated for by lots of physical humor – numerous pratfalls and not one but three attacks on Trip by unlikely animal assailants – a chipmunk, a dolphin, and a chuckwalla (a kind of lizard, for those who failed herpetology 101) – which had the audience in stitches.

      Oscar winner Kathy Bates (Misery) and NFL Hall-of-Famer Terry Bradshaw are wasted as Trip’s parents, as are Justin Bartha (National Treasure) and Bradley Cooper (Wedding Crashers) as his best friends.

      The one bright spot is Zooey Deschanel’s (Elf) as Paula’s acerbic roommate, Kit, whose obsession with silencing a mockingbird outside her window provides some of the film’s most humorous scenes.  Her attempt to buy a shotgun to rid herself of the bird is priceless, and a later scene between Kit and Ace (Bartha), in which he attempts CPR on the downed creature, produced the most sustained laughter from the audience of anything in the movie.

      Alas, the same scene showed more chemistry between these supporting actors than ever developed for the stars.  A movie built around Deschanel’s quirky comedy – now that would be worth the price of admission.

 This review appeared in the Aberdeen American News on March 12,  2006.

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This page last updated on March 21, 2006.