A thirty-five year old man has a hard time leaving his parent’s nest in the romantic comedy FAILURE TO LAUNCH. Matthew McConaughey is Trip, a man who despite financial stability and a healthy love life refuses to leave the friendly confines of his parents’ home. His parents Al and Sue feel Trip’s time to fly the coop is well overdue, so they enlist the services of Paula, played by Sarah Jessica Parker. Paula specializes in giving grown men the necessary confidence and motivation to leave home, but makes a professional error when she falls for Trip.
FAILURE TO LAUNCH gets caught up in the contrivances of its script and loses sight of its heart. The niche is watching Sarah Jessica Parker’s intelligent and sexy Paula try to woo the charming and equally appealing Trip into doing something he doesn’t want to. The heart of the film is the question of why Trip and Paula are in the situations they are in. Three animal attacks, a vicious paint ball fight and many, many scenes later we find out exactly why these two are in such an emotional rut. This burning question plagues the film throughout, and should have been answered early on, utilizing their internal turmoil to develop the characters, and build a storyline worthy of our interest. Jessica-Parker and McConaughey are both charming, and they have the necessary chemistry to make a picture like this work. Unfortunately they were forced to fight a screenplay with an emotional failure to launch.
Grade: C-
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